LIBRARY OF CONGR ESS. 
Shelf._iT6_4>, 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE PHILOSOPHY 



OF 



SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 



ARNOLD TOMPKINS 



AUTHOR OK "THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING" AND "THE SCIENCE 
OF DISCODESE" 



Tlio Scliool is an organic, spiritual unity. — W. A. Jones 

;EP 9 -189S' 

BOSTON, U.S.A., AND LONDON 
GINN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

1895 






o0 \\ 

,1 



Copyright, 1S95, 
Bx Aknold Tompkins. 

AU rights reserved. 



Sä 

PREFACE. 

The nuclcus of the following discussion appeared as a chap- 
ter in the lirst edition of "The Philosoph}' of Teaching." 
1t is now expanded into a companion volume, with a more 
fundamental setting than at first given ; and thus with a scope 
extended to include management from the kindergarten to 
the university. Those who wish the easier and the more 
practical discussion will find it beginning on page 67. It 
is thought, however, that a patient development from the 
first will be inost satisfactoiy in the end. 

The spirit of the book is clearly traceable to contact with 
\V. A. .Jones, first president of the Indiana State Normal 
Bühool. Had it not been for the influence of Ins class work 
and his daily practice in management, this book would, per- 
haps, not have been vvritten ; and I can but wish it were a 
more worthy monuinent to the memory of the man whose 
potent ideas stimulated so many to earnest effort in planting 
fundamental educational doetrines. For wise counsel in the 
general treatment of the subject I am ever grateful to L. H. 
Jones, Superintendent of Schools, Cleveland, Ohio. 



ARNOLD TOMPKINS. 



Chicago, Illinois, 

May 10, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION vii 

TUE FUNDAMENTAL LAW 1 

Found within the Organism itself 1 

Found within the Organism as a Spiritual Process .... 3 

Fouml within the Spiritual Unity of the Teacher and Pupil . 15 

Found within the Spiritual Unity of the Pupil 21 

TUE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM 35 

U.VIFYINC QüALITIES IN TUE TEACHEK 38 

Freedom in the Vocation 41 

The Pupil's Ideal 44 

Professional Spirit 48 

Self-forgetful Euthusiasm for the Pupil's Good. ... 54 

Definite Sense of the Process of Self-Realization ... 57 

Consciousness of Organic Unity of Subject and Objeet 59 

Sensitiveness to Unity in the School Organism .... 64 

Unifying Conditions of Teacher and Pupils 67 

Personal Contact 69 

The School-room 72 

Communicablc Relation of Teacher and Pupil 73 

Economy of Energy in Teacher and l'upil 75 

Energy not diverted froin Subject to Seif 76 

By UiH'oinfortablc Seats 76 

By Improper Temperature of Room 77 

By Bad Ventilation of Room 77 

By Bad Fighting of Room 77 

Energy not diverted from Subject to Other Things . . 78 

Through Toueh 78 

Through Sight 79 

Through Hearing 79 

Through Prepossessing Trains of Thought .... 80 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Instruments of School Work 81 

Apparatus 81 

Laboratory 81 

Library 82 

Text-books . . 84 

Unifying Qualities and Conditions secured. — School 

Supervision 84 

Supervising Instruction. — Superintendent 86 

Functions and Qualifications 87 

Selecting Teacher 90 

Aiding Teacher 92 

Supervising Conditions of Instruction. — Director ... 97 

Relation to Teacher and Superintendent 97 

Professional Character and Responsibility 98 

Basis and Limitation of Supervision 99 

THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW 103 

The Organism in the Process of Instruction . . . . 104 

Unity in the School as a Whole 105 

Organization of the School 108 

Classification 109 

Gradation 114 

The Program 130 

Pupils in Active Unity with Teacher 132 

Unity in Class studying 133 

Conditions of Pupils before set to Work ..... 134 

The Assignment of the Lesson 134 

Certainty of Class understanding Assignment . . . 136 

Needs for Work supplied ; Unnecessary Things removed 137 

Class set to Work 137 

Class to hold to Work assigned 138 

Unity in Class reciting 141 

Pmper Condition of Pupils 141 

Preparation of Lesson by Teacher 141 

Attitüde of Attention 143 

The Forward Movement of Class 143 

Directions 143 

Questions 146 

Explanations or Lectures 150 

Obstacles in Eorward Movement 152 

Weak Pupils 152 



CONTENTS. Vll 

PAGE 

Intrusion of Foreign Elements 153 

Personal Attack of Teacher on I'ujiil 156 

Restoratiou o£ Brokeu Unity 157 

Tlie Law of Restoratiou 157 

Application of the Law 162 

The First Step 163 

The Seeond Step 165 

Effect of Application of Law on Pupil 175 

' Effect of Application od Teacher 179 

The True Point of Skill in Management 181 

Etiiic.vl Training within tue Organism 183 

Harmony of Means antl End 185 

The Law against Artificial Iucentives 185 

Per cents 185 

Examinations 189 

Prizes and Honors 193 

Emulation and Rivalry 194 

Influeuce of Social Combiuation 196 

Politeness 198 

Order 202 

Truthfulness 203 

Industry 205 

Justice 207 

Altruism 209 

Rational Freedom 212 



INDEX 219 



INTRODUCTION. 



The teaehing process having been considered in "The 
Philosophy of Teaehing," it is now in order to consider 
the school as an organized means in making that process 
effective. 

To make this disenssion of the most practical Service, 
it must reduce the complex school process to the unity 
of a single principle, to a universal law of management; 
hence the "Philosophy of Management." It is impos- 
sible, as well as undesirable, to prescribe a complete list 
of specific duties. The wisest economy is to make clear 
the oue principle which has power to take care of all in- 
dividnal cases; and the deeper the principle, the greater 
the power and the economy. Besides, specific rules 
deaden and enslave, while a universal law guides and 
inspires with a consciousness of freedom and power. 

A catalogue of "do's" ind "du not's " may serve the 
mere operative in a factory, where the material conditiuns 
remain fixed; but the teacher, with whom the conditions 
are perpetually varying, must be guided by a principle 
which taet and ingenuity may apply to each new case as 
it arises. Thus only can the teacher move with certainty 



X INTRODUCTION. 

and precision; while the application of unvarying rules 
to varying conclitions is the prolific source of error and 
confusion. A fundamental prineiple — that is, a prin- 
ciple inherent in all the facts under consideration — has 
not only the greatest economic breaclth of application 
by' including the whole System of facts, but insures the 
greater certainty in dealing with any one of the facts in 
the System; because universal truth is also the essential 
truth. 

The teacher, therefore, who would seek skill in the 
art of school management, must ground himself well in 
the underlying prineiple; for skilful practice implies 
sound theory. It is unsafe, as well as illogical, to set 
theory over against practice, as if the more of one the 
less of the other. School management is a process, and 
the theory of it is the theory of a practice. The two are 
organically one, — two sides of the same process, the 
process in thought and the process in external realization. 
Theory is practice in thought; practice is theory emerging 
from thought. The one is the process in idea, the other 
the idea in process. The idea cannot go forth in process 
tili it is first formed in mind; hence every one who 
practices must have a theory of some kind ; and, other 
things equal, the practice will be goorl to the degree of 
excellence in the theory. The more perfectly the school 
is held in mind as an organic process, the more perfectly 
may the process be realized in the school. And the 
most perfect form of the school process in thought is 
that of philosophy, — the form which holds all the 



INTHODUCTION. xi 

complex elements of the process in the grasp of a uni- 
versal law. 

But souncl theory does not insure successful practice. 
Taot and common sense have a large, if not the largest, 
share in the result. Principles cannot apply themselves; 
there is always supposed to be a teacher who adjusts law 
to a given case. Tact, the power to touch an instance 
with a law, is personal and private, and cannot be sup- 
plied by a book on theory, — or on practice either, for that 
matter. This fact is overlooked by those who clamor for 
the practical in the form of rules and recipes. ÜSTo rule 
Ran be made to fit the case before it arises. If a teacher 
could be told how to manage a boy in a given offence, 
— a boy of given age, disposition, temperament, home 
trainin g of a specific kind, etc., etc. , to color of hair and 
eyes, — it would be useless, since this case can never 
arise again. There is a realm of immediate and personal 
responsibility touching each new case as it arises, which 
cannot be shifted to the side of theory; and this is the 
realm of skill in the teacher. Unsound theory cannot 
work; sound theory may not, because it may have to 
work through imperfect instrumentalities. Let those, 
therefore, who are disposed to condemn certain theories, 
withhold judgment tili having proved their skill by suc- 
cessfully operating linder other principles. It is ahvays 
possible for those who fail in following one theory to 
fail ander all others. Hence this book, while announcing 
so positively the value of a universal principle, and 
developing the idea with earnest conviction, does not 



XÜ INTRODUCTION. 

hope for satisfactory practice from all wlio should be 
tlius indoctrinated. All that can be done is to supply the 
indispensable guiding tliougbt, in light of which success- 
ful management is possible. After all, tbe individual 
teacher, knowing his own peculiarities, and the particular 
circumstances under whicli he operates, mnst work out 
his own salvation with fear and trembling. 

But the saddest admission to be raade is that both 
theory and art may fail. Given both the science and 
the skill of management as perfect as could be expected 
within the limits of human nature, and there are cases 
which resist all effort, be it ever so wise, patient, and 
persistent. Some pupils, through heredity, and home 
and street life, resist to the last the art of the divinely 
gifted teacher operating on the soundest principles. The 
school Organization is a power for good, but it need sur- 
prise no one that it cannot regenerate on the spot every 
specimen of humanity that comes within its influence. 
The State has been operating with imposing machinery 
for ages; but lo! we have the bad Citizen with us always. 
The Churchj with its manifold auxiliaries, works with 
ceaseless industry and inspired zeal to save fallen man, 
but man is still fallen. Social science, in the vigor, zeal, 
and hope of youth, has still set the millennium in the 
distant future. In the long run all of these worthy and 
heroic efforts are for progress ; but they must tolerate evil 
a while longer, trusting to the measured, peaceful course 
of time to prove that "through the ages one increasing 
purpose runs." The school, as a means of ameliorating 



INTKODUCTION. XÜi 

the condition of man, is grounded in sonnd faith, dis- 
tinctly pronounced, and justifiable by its fruits. Social 
Science, the Church, the State, and the Family, with all 
their confusion of differences in theory, in creeds, and 
constitutions, do verily believe the school a power unto 
righteousness. Tliis Charge let the teacher accept in good 
faith, and put one more Shoulder to the wheel of universal 
progress; but not as a contract to bring at once all the 
discordant elements resisting the other institutions into 
one peaceful and harmonious school life. The teacher 
should not be expected to manage what all the other 
organizations , especially the family, fail to manage. 

If any teacher should take the foregoing as an excuse 
for anything less than the wisest, the most persistent, and 
the most sympathetic effort to bring the resisting elements 
into the unity of school life, and thus save the pupil 
through unity with his own higher life, I should wish 
the admission had been suppressed. The teacher must 
accept the largest responsibility, and measure up to it as 
fully as possible; yet he should not die in despair because 
all imperfections in the world are not to be buried with 
him. This admission of the impotency of theory and art 
to deal effectively at once with certain conditions and 
pupils generally found in all schools, is made as the 
saving clause for those intensely earnest and sensitive 
teachers who feel conscience-stricken because some stub- 
born blood globule holds out against all wise and skilful 
effort. Is there not a limit somewhere to the teacher's 
responsibility? Even the great Teacher was forced to 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

exclaim, "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how 
often would I have gathered thy children together, even 
as a heu gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye 
would not! " Even so; they would not, and He could not. 
If they still will not, how can we? 



SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 

A sciiooL is quite a complex object, for it inclurles 
teachers, pupils, parents, officers, tax-payers, funds, 
houses, and apparatus. These diverse parts exist in 
nnity, since tliey co-operate to one end under tlie moving 
force of a single idea. All tlie diverse acts of the seferal 
factors focus themselves in tlie one single act for which 
all the aets are performed. Hence the sehool is an 
organic process. It is this procesa which is to be man- 
aged, und for which thero must be a fundamental law, — 
a law which gives unity to the diversity of funetions in 
the manifold parts, — the Law of Unity. 

This is obviously the law of any organism whatever. 
An organism can have no other ; but this law needs 
detailed speeification to appear as the working power in 
sehool management. In defining the law to this end, it 
must first be observed that the law has its sanetion : — 

Within the Organism Itself. — The law of the sehool 
is inherent in the sehool, and not externally imposed. 
The butanist may discover laws of growth in the blade 

1 



2 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

of grass, but he cannot legislate for it. The physiologist 
may aimounce laws for the circulation of the blood, but 
he cannot dictate those laws. The law of an organism 
is its own inherent energy moving forward, by variety of 
functions in unity, to realize the end which called forth 
the organism. Laws cannot be imposed upon it; external 
legislation cannot control its action. The solar System 
moves on in the way appointed by its own Constitution. 

This is all piain enough, but it does seem, in the case 
of social organisms, — objects of man's fixing, — that laws 
afe injected from without by those who set up the Organi- 
zation. A second thought will reveal here also the in- 
herence of law, and that what man does is but external 
manipulation in obeclience to inner law. However much 
man may fix up plans for any form of social regen eration, 
things plod on in their own seemingly stubborn way, 
in obedience to their own nature and destiny. All the 
learning and legislation of a nation cannot change at will 
the current of life in a Single city; and all helpfully done 
must be done in obedience to its own inherent law of 
development. The State itself proclaims what laws to 
write in the books for its own governing ; and it is 
obedient to them because they are its inward laws out- 
wardly manifested. There is, however, a widely ex- 
tended theory to the contrary, — a theory which Herbert 
Spencer combats in the following paragraph from his 
"Social Statics": — 

"Practically, if not professedly, they (the disciples of 
Bentham) hold, with Thrasymachus , that nothing is in- 



TUE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 3 

trinsically riglit or wrong, but that it becomes either by 
the dictum of tlie State. If we are to credit them, 
government determines what shall be morality, and not 
morality what shall be governmeut. They believe in no 
oracular principle by whose yea or nay we rnay be guided ; 
their Delphi is the House of Commons. By their account 
man lives and moves and has Ins being by legislative 
permit. llis freedom to do this or that is not natural, 
but conferred. The question, Has the Citizen any claim 
to the work of his hands? can be decided only by parlia- 
nientary division. If 'the ayes have it,' he has; if ' the 
noes, ' he has not." 

Man may discover, and formulate in Statutes, laws in 
orgauizations, but the laws are still in the organizations, 
ready to challenge the fictions of man's ordaining. Laws 
and Statutes are not the same; they may even be antago- 
nistic, and the law compelled to disown the Statute. The 
law of the school which concerns us here is not the school 
law found in the Statute books, but the inherent nature 
of the school as legislating for itself ; as giving law to all 
factors and functions, even to school law itself. 

But within this large and eomplex organism all parts 
and phases are not equally authoritative. The law which 
binds in unity does not inhere in the external, objective, 
and fixed parts, but must be sought: — 

Within the Organism as a Spiritual Process. — The 
fundamental law of the school is implied in the State- 
ment that "the school is an organic spiritual unity." 
It is not merely the co- Operation of objective and appar- 



4 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

ently fixed factors, but a movement of life through exter- 
nal forms back to life again. The law is not to be found 
in tlie material, obtrusive, objective, and stationary factors 
in tlie process ; but within the inner life wliich moves 
the organism to the realization of its purpose, — in the 
spirit which makes alive to its work the apparent 
organism, but not in the apparent organism. 

Everything exists in idea, in life and thought, before 
it can exist in objective reality; and the function of such 
objective thing is to realize the idea which created it. 
Such is the circle of its life and the law of its being. 
The idea rapid transit brought forth the railroad, and 
the railroad in turn must bring forth rapid transit. The 
railroad must relieve the pressure of life which creates 
it; but this pressure is a constant force, and the railroad 
is being perpetually created and held to the work of 
relieving the pressure. The idea by which it is realized 
must in turn be realized by it. Hence the railroad is 
not a fixed, dead, objective something, but a constant 
going out and returning to life; it is life. The objective 
thing cut loose from the life process is not a railroad; it 
vanishes into nothing when cut from its spiritual moor- 
ings. A railroad is not merely the external Organization 
of material parts, but a circle of life, which is its reality 
and its law. 

The idea of developing the child by a systematic teach- 
ing process brings forth the objective school; and this 
in turn must bring forth the development of the child. 
The objective school must answer back to the life which 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 5 

supports it. It Stands as the middle terra, in a series, 
— between an idea and its realization; but it takes the 
whole series to constitute the school. The objective, 
fixed soniething called the school, is only a phase in the 
process, and is nothing apart from that process. It exists 
in and through realizing the idea by which it itself is 
realized. The real school is the whole process, not merely 
the objective phase of it; it is the constant outgoing of 
life through an external mediating agency back to life. 
This circle, again, and not merely the external Organiza- 
tion of fixed parts, is its reality and its law. 

And this school process is still more complex. The 
idea which originates the school has two phases, — one 
that of a feit need for soraething to remove the limita- 
tions of life, and the other that of Instruction as a means 
of removing the limitations. The idea originating the 
external Organization purjjoses the freedom of the indi- 
vidnal through. Instruction. These are the Clements of 
the school in idea; neither can be oinitted, nor can they 
arise in any other Order. Instruction cannot be conceived 
without the idea of an end to be realized; and the idea 
of an external school cannot arise except under the 
thought of instruction. Each may exist in thought 
without the sueeeeding, but not withont the preceding; 
which shows that the subjeetive school is a movement 
in the direction named, — purpose, instruction, external 
Organization. 

The foregoing elements of the school in idea reverse 
themselves in the process of realization; for then the 



6 



SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 



external Organization comes first, after which Instruction 
is given, and then the purpose is realized. Neither can 
tliis order be reversed. Tlie purpose cannot be realized 
without Instruction, and the Instruction cannot be given 
without organized rneans to that end. And tbese three 
phases of school can exist only on the foregoing three as 
a basis. Besides, they must exist in the reverse order, 
— are logically conditioned in that order. The first in 
idea is last in objective reality. An idea always reverses 
the order of its elements in the process of becoming 
external; the beginning becomes the end; "the first shall 
be last, and the last shall be first," as appears in the 
following diagram of the school process: — 



The 



The 
Idea 



1. Purpose, or Need. 

2. Instruction. 



School ^ 3. Organization — Management. 



4. Organization — Management. 

5. Instruction. 



School ■{ becoming 
Pkocess. The 

Eeal 
School. [ 6. Purpose, or Need, Realized. 

Thus the objective school Organization, both as idea 
and as objective reality, is the hinging-point on which 
the ideas, purpose, and Instruction fold back upon them- 
selves as actualized Instruction and purpose. The ideal 
purpose and method of Instruction form the subject-matter 
in "The Philosophy of Teaching." The hinging-point, 
through which purpose and Instruction are turned back 
realized, is the subject-matter for " School-Management ; " 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 7 

and the fundamental law of school management is dis- 
elosed in the fact that the subject to be treated is a 
hinging-point in the school process, and not a thing in 
and of itself. 

Thus we are brought to the fact of supreme practical 
Importance; namely, that the fundamental law Controll- 
ing the school as an external Organization cannot be 
dictated by that Organization, but has its origin in the 
process taken as a whole. While the law must arise 
from within, as shown at the outset, yet the law does not 
get its authority from any part, but from the school as 
a whole, taken in its entire circle of activity. The part, 
such as the external Organization, with which manage- 
ment has to do, receives its law from the Avhole. The 
law of the school is its informing life, its inherent 
nature, which finds expression in the objective something 
with which school management has to deal. All the 
organic factors of the external Organization, including the 
school law itself, must be tested by an idea which is 
antecedent to, and which logically conditions, the external 
and objective school 

The external Organization, instead of dictating the law, 
may even be in Opposition to the law. Even the Statute 
embodying school law may be antagonistic to the law of 
the school. School directors, under a false sense of 
economy, sometimes lower the tax levy and shorten the 
school term. This is done by permission of the school 
law but in Opposition to the law of the school. In faith- 
ful execution of the school law, it may be necessary to 



8 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

crowd sixty pupils into the care of one teacher; but the 
idea which creates the school has not its freedom under 
such conditions. Under substantially the same condi- 
tions different States have different laws regulating the 
supply of books to pupils. These laws cannot all be best; 
and in so declaring we recognize something inherent in 
the school by which the school law itself is to be tested. 
Without such recognition school questions could not be 
argued. While never agreeing as to what is best in 
school Organization and law, we do tacitly agree always 
that there is a best, if we could but discover it, and that 
this best is determined by something inherent in the 
nature of the school underlying external Organization. 

It thus appears that the established order is not the 
ethical order. The fugitive slave law is rendered null 
and void by the inner law. History is a record of con- 
flicts between the ideal and inner truth of things, and 
external forms which were fixed by custom and law. 
There is a perennial strife between those who are loyal 
to forms as against the idea, and those who are loyal to 
the iclea as against the form. There are those who seem 
to think that the external condition of things is the law, 
and therefore unassailable. Especially prone to hold this 
view are those who are a part of the fixed System. It 
seems to be the order, when a school System becomes 
fixed and crystallized, for those who form a part of the 
System to plead the fixed order as the ethical order, and 
to brand as iconoclasts or anarchists those who hold that 
the idea must not be violated. 



TUE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 9 

" Hence every moral and social aclvance has to fight its 
way not merely against the bad who oppose all order, but 
against the traditionally good, who believe that the social 
order is constant, and that what has been the ideal adjust- 
raent in the past mnst remain the ideal of condnct for all 
time. These conscientious but short-sighted conservatives 
are always more bitter and powerful opponents of the new 
ideal than the unprincipled rabble. The worst enemy of 
the better is the good. It was the constituted authorities, 
the conservative aristocracy of Athens, not the lawless 
and irreligious masses, who condemned Socrates to drink 
the hemlock. It was the Scribes and the Pharisees and 
the chief priests and the principal men of Jerusalem who 
crucified Jesus. . . . 

"The higher form of this struggle comes between the 
law as the representative of the existing order, — or rather 
of the order which existed when the law was framed, — and 
the individuals who see the vision of the better order that 
is about to be, and demand institutions, customs, Standards, 
duties, liberties large enough to meet the requirement of 
the social order that has come into being since the law was 
made, or Stands ready to come as soon as the hard crust of 
the old order can be broken so as to give the new life 
room. Here society is behind the individual, and is trying 
to hold him back. Thus the average good man is equally 
at war with the bad man who is below him, and the pro- 
gressively good man who is above him. The reformer and 
the criminal are about equally obnoxious to the man of 
average goodness and intelligence. The prophets and the 



10 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

betrayers of their country are equally odious, and promis- 
cuously stoned. The Saviour is crucified between two 
thieves." 1 

The forms through which life realizes itself, whether 
school, family, society, church, or state, tend to fix them- 
selves, and to check the life which grows through them. 
This is natural and inevitable. A considerable part of 
man's effort must be spent in readjusting the forms of 
life to the growing conditions of life. Man lives in 
advance of the customs of society, the laws of the state, 
the creeds of the chnrch, and the methods and Statutes 
of the school. When the tension becomes too great, as 
it does naturally and periodically, the old forms must be 
readjusted, or new ones substituted. It will be evolution 
or rerolution. To avoid conflict and bondage, forms 
should grow with the growing life. The radical sunders 
old forms before the life is ready for the new; the con- 
servative clings to old forms after they are outgrown; the 
serpent shows more wisdom in shedding the old skin 
through forming the new. One of the serious problems 
of school management is how to shed modes, forms, and 
customs through forming the new, that no violence may 
be done in the transition. The iconoclast would not have 
to break our idols, and with them our faith, if he would 
spend his time in preparing us to worship better things. 
The wisdom of the serpent in these matters would be the 
harmlessness of the dove. 

But in making the change from the old to the new, 

1 Social Theology, — Dr. Htde. 



TUE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 11 

wliat is and what has been in externa! Organization, while 
serving as a basis of action, can never be the advancing 
light — can never reveal what ouglit to be. The history 
of education is usually justified in a teacher's course, on 
the ground that in knowing what has been, it is known 
what ought to be. But fche history of education cannot 
be read except in light of the unrealized ideal. History 
shows how far the idea has succeeded in realizing itself, 
and this is vital to the teacher; but to learn what has 
been, in order to find in such external a Standard for 
Imitation, is the servitude of form, and not the freedom 
of an idea. The best text-book on a given subject cannot 
be made by averaging texts already made; and the best 
one existing cannot be excelled without recognizing an 
ideal beyond anything accomplished. To study school 
Systems with a view to finding a Standard in the average 
best thing, is to keep the Standard from advancing. If 
progress is to be made, the Standard must be created and 
set up in advance of anything realized. Not what is, 
but what ought to be, is the paramount question. The 
law of the school requires that the teacher struggle 
against environment and existing forms to a fuller reali- 
zation of the idea than has yet been attained. The 
strongest tension possible must be maintained up to the 
risk of breaking with the forms and environment in 
which the life is rooted. This law of school life is the 
universal law of Irving, which holds that the real must 
continually yield to the ideal as it presses onward to 
realize itself. 



12 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

This tension between the real and the ideal reveals 
itself clearly in the two classes of edncational theorists 
and practitioners : those who construct the System a 
priori, and those who construct it a posteriori, — from the 
causal force of an idea, and from experience. The first, 
in the extreme type, ignore the concrete conditions, and 
build an educational Utopia; the second, in the extreme, 
see nothing but the concrete fixed conditions, and sink 
below the best already attained. Of the first type there 
are very few; and even their mistakes are inspiringly 
helpful ; of the second, and of those tending that way, is 
the great body of the profession, and with them rests the 
professional crimes against childhood. The crime of all 
crimes, so frequently committed by teachers and super- 
intendents, is that of comfortably and safely adjusting 
to existing conditions and prevailing sentiments among 
those for whom they labor. Whether a teacher be in- 
spired by the idea, so that he presses onward towards 
its realization, or whether simply wise in harmoniously 
fitting into prevailing modes and opinions, determines, 
more than any other one thing, whether he bless or blight 
the life he is supposed to save. It is worthy of note 
that those teachers put down in the world's history for 
eminent Service have been inspired with an idea which 
pressed firmly and constantly against existing conditions ; 
while others have gone into hibernation to spend as 
securely and comfortably as possible the winter of their 
professional lives. Of course one must not break with 
his environment, for to do so would be to lose his useful- 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 13 

ness; Imt if he levels to it, he has no usefulness to lose. 
What needs to be insisted ou is the presence of an 
inner law, which must constantly re-shape and mould the 
external condition of things, on the basis of the existing 
condition of things. Every ideal must rise upon the real 
to which it is in bondage. Outer forms and laws are but 
stepping-stones of the living idea, which constructs for 
itself new stepping-stones as they are needed. 

Thus the broadest requirement in ade b} r the funda- 
mental law of the school is that the Organization be 
adjusted to the demand of the ideal; that it never be 
regarded as fixed and an end; but that it be a perfect 
means standing between ideal purpose and Instruction on 
the one hand, and realized 'Instruction and purpose on the 
other, — the teaching process in idea, and the teaching 
process in objective reality. A school Organization is 
tested by ascertaining how fully the thought and purpose 
of those in whom the Organization rests has been realized 
by its agency. Of course it is of first importance to have 
a high ideal in the teaching process; but this ideal 
belongs to the philosophy of teaching, and we are here 
concerned only with its adequate realization through the 
school as an external means. 

Thus the real school, from which law emanates, is mind 
in effort to unfold mind; and not the school-house and 
appliances, school officers and school law. This effort 
binds into a school, Citizens, parents, officers, teachers, 
and pupils. These minds may not be actively making 
such effort in order that there be a school, but they must 



14 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

be permanently disposed to make it. The scliool exists 
during vacation. A university does not vanisli at com- 
raencement. A State university is a certain disposition 
in the minds of the State, — a spiritual power to act 
througli extern al agencies in a specified process of Instruc- 
tion. The whole external Organization falls to pieces in 
a moment when such disposition is withdrawn. Then 
the school-house is no longer a school-house; a trustee 
no longer a trustee; the teacher ceases to be a teacher. 
Thus again it appears that the objective school, cut loose 
from its spiritual moorings, vanishes. This cannot be 
too often insisted upon, for we are so much accustomed 
to feel that the external, objective, and perhaps material 
something is the reality; and that therefore laws and 
principles of Operation innere in it, and are to be deduced 
from it. We are quite strictly materialists in school 
management; setting objective and fixed forras and rules 
harcl ancl fast over against a growing and pulsating life. 

Thus the broadest aspect of the law of unity requires 
the circle from the ideal through the external Organiza- 
tion to the real — the life circle — to be kept intact ; that 
everything in the external Organization be kept in move- 
ment to the realization of an ideal; that the end always 
dominate the means and never be dominated by it. In 
closest statement the unity is that of the ideal and the 
real; and the meaning of the law is that the external 
Organization must be true to this unity, and not set up 
one of its own. 

But the school conceived merely as "an organic spiritual 



TUE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 15 

unity " is too vague and general.to have working value, 
and niust be reduced to lower terms: — 

In the Spiritual Unity of Teacher and Pupil. — This 
seems to be the spiritual centre ont of which issues all 
law, and to wliicli all instrurnentalities co-operate; for it 
is here that the miräcle of changing the ideal into the 
real is wrought. The co-operation of these two factors 
accomplishes the end for which the whole sy stein exists. 
Teacher and pupil, in co-operative tonch to the end for 
which the school exists, of themselves constitute the 
school. A thumb-bell may be a part of the Organiza- 
tion; bnt the change froni the ideal to the real is not in 
its co-operation with any other organ. The cliange can 
take place, and the school can exist without it. A 
clock and a blackboard may be parts of the school 
machinery ; bat the teaching process can go on without 
them, and the school is not destroyed by their rcmoval. 
'The co-operation of the school-honse is not the teaching 
process, and the school can exist with a Mark Hopkins 
on one end of a log and a Garfield on the other. Drawing 
more nearly to the school, and yet the teaching process can 
exist without gymnasium, laboratory, or library. The Co- 
operation of neitherof these with any other constitutes the 
process, and the efficiency of the Organization cannot be 
tested therein. Director, trustee, connty Superintendent, 
state Superintendent, and national commissioner of educa- 
tion are useful members, but the school can exist in idea, as 
it has done in fact, without them. The co-operation of either 
of them with any other factor is not the teaching process, 



16 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

and a school System cannot be tested in the work of 
either. It would at first seem that if the public fund and 
tax-payer were removed, the bottom would fall out of the 
Institution; but it is not so. School must keep; the 
sentiment is too deeply rooted to be baffled by trifling 
inconveniences through lack of organized fund, or hie- 
rarchy of officers, or school-house with all the wealth of 
modern appliances. Even if the parent were removed, 
the school would still operate; for a time, at least; as long 
as necessary. 

But the process vanishes if either teacher or pupil be 
dropped. These two in co-operative unity constitute a 
school, and the law is to be tested in their organic unity. 
All other parts of the organism work their way down to 
tbis unity through these two factors. The prolonged and 
heroic effort States have made in organizing a school fund 
is to bring teacher and pupil together under the most 
favorable conditions of co-operation. The Commissioner 
of Education must find his way through the long line of 
forces down to the touch of teacher with pupil. Library, 
laboratory, and gymnasium are but unifying agencies 
between teacher and pupil; and the value of thumb-bell 
or clock, eraser or wall map, is tested by the influence 
exerted on the unity of teacher with pupil. Thus the 
school is quite a complex, but closely integrated, process. 
Every act perform ed, however remote, finds its way to 
the unity described; and is there testecl. When the 
director fails to supply good fuel, or the trustee a good 
blackboard, the unity is weakened. When the county 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 17 

Superintendent gives license to a teacher, or a trustee 
selects one, the value of the act will be testet! in tlie 
unity of teacher and pupil in the teaching act. The State 
Superintendent renders a decision, and it ultimately shows 
itself in the concrete teaching process, — in the unity of 
Blind with niind in the teaching act. The teacher fails 
to prepare the lesson, and the detrimental result is found 
when his mind fails to conie into unity with that of the 
pupil on the topic under consideration. 

Behavior or conduct in school, whether on the part 
of the teacher, parent, pupil, or school officer, is the way 
one bears himself in reference to this vital touch of mind 
with mind in the act of Instruction. A right act in 
school is one which secures, or tends to secure, unity 
between the mind- of the teacher and the pupil in the 
teaching process; while a wrong act is one which destroys, 
or tends to destroy, such unity. School management is 
the process by which all the acts of all the agents con- 
stituting the organism are brought into the unity of the 
one act above described. The law of the school, there- 
fore, as an external organism, requires unity to the vital 
centre of its manifold and complex parts. Thus, besides 
the school process as a whole, as at first described, and 
of which the external Organization is a link, there is 
another organic process in the objective school, — a work- 
ing together of all its complex parts to a point in the 
school process as a whole. 

The character of the unity between teacher and pupil 
further specities the law. The two are one in the teach- 



18 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

ing process; for in teaching, whatever thought, sentiment, 
or resolution the teacher would stimulate in the pupil's 
mind, he must first have in Ins own consciousness. While 
causing the pupil to think the colors of the rainbow, the 
teacher must think them; and if the pupil's heart is to 
leap up when he beholds "a rainbow in the sky," the 
teacher's must leap with it. And the resolution and 
tendency to higher life expected in the pupil from the 
rainbow study must be the resolution and tendency of his 
own life under that study. Thus, in all teaching there 
is a point of identity of consciousness between teacher 
and pupil. This identity of consciousness is the centre 
of the System, and it is this which management is to 
secure. Suppose the teacher, in teaching " Paul Revere's 
Eide," be in the inspired mood to which his pupil is to 
be brought, good management will bring the pupil into 
unity with the teacher's inspiration; and the extent to 
which the pupil falls short, barring the question of his 
ability, must be put to the score of bad management 
somewhere in the System. At the moment of that effort 
on the part of the teacher, the whole school System, out 
to its remotest limits, Stands pledged to the unity of 
inspiration of teacher and pupil in the poem under con- 
sideration. The tax-payer is toiling for it; the Com- 
missioner of Education is issuing his report to that 
end; the State Superintendent is interpreting the law to 
strengthen the work in hand; the county Superintendent 
is issuing orders for the good of the cause ; and the 
school-house, with its library, gymnasium, wall-map, 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 19 

blackboard, crayon, pointer, and eraser, marshals all its 
forces to the issue. The stove, the desks, the table, 
the curtains at the window, — all are focusing their 
energy at the moment to bring the pupil's inspiration 
up to that of the teacher's. Even the Governor and the 
President of the United States stand in constant and vital 
touch with the effort to arouse the pupil to the level of 
the teacher. Thus, at any moment, the school consists 
of the active, purposed influences which combine to draw 
the pupil into unity with the teacher in the teaching 
act. Again the school appears not to be a fixed some- 
thing, but a living, moving thing in the process of 
realizing an idea. The school is a complex of functions, 
bringing teacher and pupil into co-operation. 

But while in the teaching act there is a point of 
identity between teacher and pupil, there is the import- 
ant difference which makes the act of one teaching and 
that of the other learning. They are really thinking about 
different things. The point of subject-matter in which 
the two are to unite is old to the teacher; and at the 
time merely reproduced in idea in order to awaken the 
same in the mind of the pupil. The teacher in the act 
of teaching is really thinking of the pupil's experience, 
while the pupil is thinking about the subject under con- 
sideration. The subject being old to the teacher, and 
merely reproduced in idea to guide in stimulating the 
pupil to realize the same, the teacher turns Ins effort to 
the experience of the pupil in the act of learning; and 
with this further difference, that the teacher is conscious 



20 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

of the value of the experience of the pupil in terms of 
his unfolclirig life. What the teacher should be really 
conscious of is the process of growth 011 the part of the 
pupil in the act of fostering it. In teaching, the true 
teacher lives in the life of the pupil. If each lesson 
does not change the life of the pupil, no reason can be 
assigned for giving it; and if this be true, the teacher 
must be conscious of the change made in the act of mak- 
ing it; or the blind will be leading the blind. Hence 
the teacher must hold the pupil's life in his grasp in 
each act of teaching, — his whole life, for each lesson 
touches it from its centre to its circumference. Now, 
this good of life, immediate and remote, the pupil cannot 
be conscious of; if so, he could be his own teacher. In 
teaching, then, the pupil puts his effort on the subject- 
matter, while the teacher puts his effort on the growing 
life of the pupil , through his experiences with the subject- 
matter. The teacher holds in idea the aim, and the 
experiences by which the aim is realized; and at the 
same time the pupil has the real experiences and thus 
realizes the aim. Thus we have reached the point where 
the miracle is wrought, ■ — the change from the ideal to 
the real, for which the organized System Stands. And 
thus, too, while drawing differences between teacher and 
pupil, we have reached a more fundamental likeness, — 
a likeness in purpose and effort, which combine the two 
into the unity which makes the school. We have already 
seen that these two factors are the essential ones in the 
school process ; that they really constitute the school. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 21 

They form the school in tlie nnity of purpose and effort 
to realize the life of the pupil. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, the pupil is making an effort to realize his pos- 
sibilities, and the teacher is uniting with hini in the effort. 
In this unity of effort of the two we have the school in 
its simplest and most concrete form; but in the larger 
sense, the school consists of all the minds making effort 
with the pupil in his development. Tims it appears 
again that the school is a spiritual unity, consisting of 
minds in effort to unfold mind. Minds permanently 
disposed to make such effort is the school, in repose 
or quiescent; but when the effort is active, we have the 
school in process. 

But in all this the teacher, while not vanishing, as did 
the thumb-bell, is reduced to the secondary position of 
instrument; and in last analysis we are forced to locate 
the law simply : — 

Within the Spiritual Unity of the Pupil Himself. — 
This is the nnity of the pnpil's real and ideal seif; or 
rather, the school is the tension between the two. lleach- 
ing inward through all tlie forms and process of the com- 
plex school system, this tension is found as the last and 
the abiding force; and moving outward from-this ceutre, 
it may be seen determining and dfawing all instrnmen- 
talities to the infinite work of releasing the tension, whieh 
is constautly renewed. The Student, directly ol- in- 
directly, consciously or nnconsciously, creates the school 
as external Organization. This is quite obvions in the 
case of mature stndents. The first schools were made 



22 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

by the students themselves. Schools for children came 
later, and were created in sympa,thy for them, — created 
as they would have done for themselves, had they been 
conscious of their needri. In any case it is the Student 
who virtually orgauizes instrumentalities for his own 
development. Those who join with him in effort are only 
instrumentally connected; they are not the primary 
motive in the process. When a university is founded, 
it is on the assumption of a basis in the purpose, latent 
or active, in a number who are striving for improvement. 
Students might create, support and manage the Institu- 
tion by which they themselves are taught, as is done in 
a church by its members. In this case it is evident that 
the spirit of the Student is the basis of the school; but 
it is no less so when they accept agencies prepared on the 
assumption that they will make those agencies their own. 

And here we have come upon the most specific and 
vital principle of school management, — one which must 
be carried forward throughout the discussion. A school 
is firmly grounded when it is conscious of itself, if we 
may. think of it so, — that is, when the objective school 
is held by the pupil as arising out of his own life; when 
seen as truly himself, and not the will of another; when 
he does not feel that it is something set over against 
himself, but that it is himself projected in that form for 
his own self-realization. This means that school adminis- 
tration should be entirely democratic; that is, no arbi- 
trary will must displace the pupil's obedience to himself 
as objectified in the school. At first, of course, he may 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 23 

not be able to see himself as tlie law, except in detail; 
bnt to gradually reveal tlie fact to bim tbat be is tbe 
school, to wbicb bis condnct must conform, is tbe very 
trinmpb of management. Tbe school is never stable 
unless it rests in tbe pupil's adoption of it as bis law; 
in tbis tbe school has its fnllest and firmest reality. 

It is obvious from the foregoing that tbe worst stroke 
of management imaginable is one which assails the reality 
of the school; and it usually takes tbis shape. The 
teacber, or it may be those administering affairs, says 
to pupils, in word or bearing, "I am running an Institu- 
tion here, of which yon are members by grace. Yes, 
come to tbink of it, I am really glad of your presence, 
and will take it as a personal favor for you to patronize 
my establishment, for by this I gain my livelibood. Of 
conrse, T will expect to recompense yon with whatever 
favors I may be able to bestow, — such as securing posi- 
tions in störe or Workshop; and it may be tbat if you 
remain long enough, and make the Obligation great 
enough, I may reward you with a position in my school, 
to which you will have been so disinterestedly loyal. 
Bnt if there is disorder here, — if you in any way inter- 
fere with the smooth running of my business, — beware 
of my rigbt arm. All rights, privileges, and immunities 
are vested in nie; I make and execute the law. When 
you toucb the school, you touch my personal affairs. 
Beware, I say; vengeance is mine." In tbis attitude a 
school may be crushed into seeming good order, but it 
is the worst of disorder; not only because students and 



24 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

teaclier are sundered, but because the Organization is 
shifted from its real basis, and the unity of the student's 
life with it is broken. 

From this it must not be inferred that the mauagement 
of the school must be turned over to the whirns and 
caprices of the students, but that all things be done from 
the standpoint that the student, constantly setting up 
in thought the Organization for his own development, is 
the school. Hence, negatively, management must do 
nothing to forbid the pupil from projecting his own 
rational nature as the school; and, positively, must do 
everything possible to enable the pupil to see the school 
as his own life, and to render obedience to its laws as to 
the laws of his own nature. The Citizen reads the enact- 
ment of the State against theft, and cliscerns in it nothing 
but the requirement of his own nature, and renders 
obedience to it as his true seif objectified. In this atti- 
tude he is free, for he renders obedience only to himself ; 
whereas, if the law is something foreign to him, and thus 
imposed upon him, he is a slave to external requirement. 
The free Citizen, the free State, the free country, mean 
only the freedom of self-obedience of the subject, — the 
obedience of the seif to the larger seif, — the state. 
Every individual in the state must come at last to say, 
with more commendable pride than Louis XIV., "I am 
the state." The best state policy is not that which 
adjusts the tariff , but that which makes every individual 
conscious of statehoocl. 

And thus the student reads the law of the school against 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 25 

fcruancy and the like, and should see these as nothing trat 
the requirements of his own nature, as his own school 
life, and render obedience to them as his own true seif. 
It may be good, but it cannot be best, for a pupil to obey 
his teacher. It is a false assumption that he is predis- 
posed to disobey the requirements of the school, and that 
external authority must enter at once on the work of 
suppression. The main line of work running tlirough 
the management of a school is that of developing in the 
thought of the pupil the laws which are in the school 
because of his membership in it. This does not require 
a logical exposition of the theory of the school, but the 
laws are to be made to appear through the concrete situa- 
tions of school life. Consultation, formal or informal, 
on special interests and phases of conduct, is the effective 
means, even with a class of youngest students. The 
mere compliment of recognitiou forestalls Opposition and 
outbreak. But the best result is not the mere matter of 
order, but the ethical value to the student: he becomes 
a student of conduct; he is finding the law of conduct in 
particular cases, and gradually, as he is able, generalizes 
them into the law of school conduct; and through this 
the laws of conduct at large will be revealed to him. 
And more, it is not merely a perception of law, but there 
is an habitual practice under the law; not merely his 
expanding theory of ethical conduct, but his expanding 
free and virtuous life under that theory. He is imme- 
diately and directly involved in every case; and it becomes 
a question of his own practice, and not a scheine to apply 



26 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

to others. No amount of nioral teaching in school can 
be as effective as a rational practice of school management. 
By it tlie school is not only made more real and secare, 
and the immediate condition for Instruction provided, but 
the pupil is thereby brought to the habit of rational self- 
control, the end of all ends in school work. We should 
expect, of course, that, if the thing be done fundamentally 
right, harmony must reign throughout; and that in thus 
securing one end all other ends will be added. 

Instead, therefore, of all the agencies in the school 
System siniply co-operating to the unity of teacher and 
pupil, the co-operation centres in the pupil, — in the unity 
between the pupil' s real and his ideal seif. Hence the 
teacher, who even Stands in vital touch with the pupil, 
cannot give law to the school. It has already been de- 
veloped and stated on page 7 " that the fundamental law 
Controlling the school as an external Organization cannot 
be dictated by that Organization; " and now it seems 
that the teacher is a part of that external Organization. 
Teachers, principals, and superintendents, stand in such 
immediate and vital relation to the process that it is 
dangerously easy for them to assume arbitrarily the law- 
giving function, and difhcult for them to subject themselves 
as means to the child as an end. This is the law of justice 
in the school, and is based on the same distinction as that 
which Plato, through the character of Socrates, urges on 
the sophist in searching for the nature of justice. The 
sophist had declared justice to be the interest of the 
stronger; but Plato urgecl that justice always considers 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 27 

the interest of the weaker. He claimed that a shepherd, 
in the character of a shepherd, conducts himself with 
reference to the welfare of his sheep, and not in the 
interest of the shepherd; that a physician, as a physician, 
is guided by the welfare of his patient, and that in so far 
as he is guided by money interests, he is a business man 
and not physician; that a governor of a State, in the 
character of governor, ninst act with sole reference to the 
welfare of his subjects. The teacher, too, has a business 
side; but in so far as he is teacher, his conduct must be 
regulated entirely by the welfare of his pupil, and the 
welfare of the same pupil must control wholly the conduct 
of Superintendent and trustee, in the character of Super- 
intendent and trustee. This truth is so obvious that it 
seems useless to discuss it; yet this is the criminal point 
in practice, and the law quite commonly violated, for the 
motive of self-interest on the part of the teacher or officer, 
confronts the interest of the pupil. The self-interest of 
those in the Organization to whom the welfare of the 
child is intrusted is the most formidable obstacle to the 
law of the school. When some township trustees used 
school money for their own private ends, they were 
properly branded criminals; and they fled before the bot 
wrath of an outraged public to the cooler and more con- 
genial clime of Canada. But their crime consisted in 
nothing more than in shortening the school term, and 
thus preventing so much opportunity on the part of the 
child. Was there anything more in this crime than the 
preference of seif, as trustee, to the child? Then what 



28 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

an alarming host of criminals in school work! Have you 
forgotten that other trustee, who, to wield local influences 
to his own interests, dropped a true and tried teaclier of 
valuable experience for the doubtful and untried one? 
In both the child was not consulted, and its interests 
were ignored; both robbed the child. The latter may 
even have done so much more effectively than the former, 
through incompetency and the dwarfing influences of bad 
teaching. Yet the form of their crime was so different 
that one remains an honored Citizen, while the others are 
the subjects of contempt and ignominy. Both robbed the 
child, and in this were equally criminal. What we need 
is a quickened school-conscience to see it so. When- 
ever a city Superintendent chooses the poorer of two teach- 
ers because of friendship, or to stand in with certain 
influences, he could not rob the child more effectively 
by putting his hand into the treasury, and ought to be 
hooted to Canacla to keep Company with his brethren. 
And so ought the teacher who, for selfish reasons, forgets 
the child in his eagerness for popularity, that he may 
control influences which make his calling and election 
sure. When Lincoln, at a critical period in the war, 
desired to make a call for soldiers, he was reminded by 
the politicians that he was a candidate for re-election to 
the presidency, and that such a call would weaken his 
prospect. With characteristic devotion, he replied that 
it was not necessary for him to be re-elected to the presi- 
dency, but that it was necessary to save the Union 
unbroken to the next man who filled the presidential 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 29 

chair. Such must be the spirit of the true teacher, — 
self-forgetful devotion to those Avhoin he serves. 

The other danger is that of forgetting the child in the 
movement of the complicated machinery. The central 
process in the pupil must command all the externa! and 
remote appliances and processes; but it is uniformly true, 
and it seems necessarily so, that the teacher, before 
reaching Ins freedom in the central law of the school, 
must pass through some form of bondage to the machinery 
which conditions his labor. All in all, the school is 
quite a complex piece of machinery. There are manifold 
processes to be performed aside from the central one. 
Teachers must be examined, the coal bought, the house 
cleaned, the record kept, classes called, and questions 
asked, — a manifold process so absorbing in variety and 
interests of detail, so overshadowing the little silent 
process wherein the miracle is wrought, that the external 
means become an end in the consciousness of those who 
teach and manage. Machinery there must be. There 
must be laws for raising revenue, a school System, school 
officers, and similar instrumentalities. The record of our 
early struggle to secure a school fund and a school System 
is a most worthy one; but it sometimes seems that the 
greater empliasis given to the System, the more danger 
there is of forgetting the child. It sometimes becomes 
a question whether the child can survive the machine. 
We have just pride in our saccess in grading- schools; but 
who has not been pained by the fact that the grading 
often becomes the end, and the child crushed in the 



30 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

process. It often happens that more discussion turns 
about grading than about the tliing really to be done. 
There cannot be good scliools without good grading, but 
a very poor school niay be found where there is good 
grading. Scarcely anything pertinent is said in boasting 
of such things. If the contrivance is good, let it be 
spoken of in terms of the teaching act. No appliance is 
good so long as it is used as an end. All appliances are 
good when subordinated to their proper relation and 
work. One of the most interesting and difficult prob- 
lems for the Superintendent of a school, or a System of 
schools, whether city, state, or county, is to find his way 
to the pupil through the complex machinery with which 
he necessarily labors. The teacher finds his way directly, 
the Superintendent indirectly; but he must find his way, 
or he is not a Superintendent. His life must touch the 
child, notwithstanding the many agencies that intervene. 
The long line of appliances and forces standing between 
him and the child are there only as a means by which he 
can reach the many; and if he gets himself tangled up 
in the machinery, he may not reach the child tili too late 
for the rescue. 

Thus we have reached the simple but potent truth that 
the general law of unity of the organism which controls 
the whole complex school System reduces itself in last 
analysis to the unity of the pupil's ideal and real seif. 
This is the unity which must never be violated, and which 
the whole System Stands pledged to maintain. In all 
questions of school Organization and management this is 
the court of ultimate appeal. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 31 

This ultimate law of the school appears the more 
authoritative when we reflect on what has been implied 
throughout, and incidentally suggested many times; 
namely, tliat the law of the school Organization is the 
law of all organizations whatever, whether Spiritual or 
physical. The law applies to the plant and the animal, 
to the church and the State, as well as to the school. Of 
course the mechanism , as the watch , differs ; f or in such 
the law is externally imposed. But a mechanism is but 
a means, a phase, in an organism, and is contrived and 
operated under the same law, — which law works from 
without. In all cases the law ruling the world is the 
tension of the ideal and the real, — the striving for nnity, 
peace, and harmony. The real gives the law of truth, 
and we affirm what a thing is; the ideal proclaims the 
law of duty, and we affirm what a thing ought to be; 
having the unity of the two, we announce the thing 
beautiful. But a thing really is not until it is what it 
ought to be, and then it is beautiful; hence truth, beauty, 
and virtue are phases of the world's movement under the 
tension of the real and the ideal , — the ultimate energy to 
which th ought can penetrate. 

All institutions arise nnder this strain of ethical Im- 
pulse which, reduced to its lowest terms, means the unity 
of the ideal and the real seif; all are processes of self- 
realization. The many-sidedness of life requires different 
methods of work, and hence different organizations; but 
whatever the variety of leverage required, the ultimate 
aim and law of all institutions, whether industrial or 



32 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

sacred, is the same. All days are holy, all work sacred, 
all institutions divine. Whatever difference there may 
be between a book on scliool management and one on the 
management of any other Organization is only a difference 
in details. While we often try to define the school as 
distinct from the other institutions, it is much more 
helpful, because more fundamental, to see how it is in 
unity with every other. A difference is always at least 
one remove less fundamental than a likeness. 

From one Standpoint the school is an offshoot and 
enlargement of the family, seeking by more effective 
means to accomplish the same result, — the nurture of 
the child into the highest type of man or woman. As 
such, its law must be the same as that of the family. 
From another view the school is but a specialized function 
of the industrial world, — an effective means to physical 
com fort and happiness through the knowledge and virtue 
which form the basis of the industrial system. But the 
industrial world seeks more than mere animal weif are, 
— it is moved by blind impulse or conscious law to the 
spiritual good of man; and in this the law of the school 
is the same as the law of the shop. In still another 
aspect the school is a function of the State, whose sole 
aim is to harmonize in justice the aggregate efforts of all 
organizations in their working to realize the supreme 
good of life. The school, by developing intelligente and 
ethical virtues, grounds the State firmly, and in return 
is organizecl and supported to make its contribution to 
the common cause of human welfare. It gives and it 



TUE FUNDAMENTAL LAW. 33 

receives; it Supports and is supported; but all this is 
but one coinplex effort to realize the ideal of lii'e. Self- 
realization is the law of both scliool and state. The 
church organizes its forces about the relation of man to 
his Maker, and strives to make man perfect, even as his 
Father in heaven is perfect; but it has always rnade the 
school its intimate ally in every work of regeneration. 
The problem of both church and school is to bring man 
ultimately into unity with his destiny, — the ultimate 
ideal of the human soul. The school is a religious Insti- 
tution; certainly so in its historical origin, and no less 
so in its ultimate aim. 1 

And thus all institutions arise out of the same truth; 
namely, that man seeks another seif. No one gives law 
to the others; they are all ways of working out the same 
problem, — ways growing out of the many-sidedness of 
the individual. All institutions arise out of the nature 
of the life of the individual, and must return to that life; 
all are but methods of realizing the value of human life 
in the individual. This is the simple law of the great 
cornplex social whole. Social science seeks but the 
formula by which the cornplex forces in the aggregate 
of human life best work in unity to the end of righteous- 
ness in the individual, — how the whole makes perfect 
the individuals which constitute the whole. 

The whole social machinery is but a cornplex school 
System, to bring man out of his present real world into 
the world of higher trnth and reality. In fact, we should 

1 See Philosoph)- of Teaching, pages 270-275. 
3 



34 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

scarcely pass tlie limit of literal language if we should 
say that the universe itself is such a systeni; for what 
do we know of the universe but a nature, an energy, 
striving through, and by nieans of , outer forms to a more 
perfect manifestation of itself? And this energy, so far 
as man presunies to officiate, or even to comprehend, is 
what has been stated as the law of the school, and which 
appears authoritative in having universal validity for all 
organizations. Even the universe is but a striving after 
the unity of the real and the potential, of appearance 
and ultiniate reality. 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 



Havistg moved iuward through the organism to find the 
law, the way is prepared to move outward, and study the 
organism in light of its genesis under the law. Tims the 
parts and their functions can best be made to appear in 
their true relations, and the conditions prepared for the 
active process to be described in the next chapter, — " The 
Organism in Executing the Law." 

The law of unity between the individual's real and 
ideal seif lies back of the formal school Organization; 
and, as before stated, is common to all organizations. 
It shapes the school as the vital principle shapes the 
physical organism. The school is the immediate off- 
spring of the rational nature of the individual ; it is that 
nature externalized. Man, having the power to dis- 
tinguish between Ins present attainment and his potential 
good, takes an active part in his own development,. Man 
is held responsible for shaping his own life. In this dual 
relation of the individual to himself we have both the 
teacher and the taught, and therefore the school; for 
the school is the organic unity between the teacher and 



36 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

the pupil. Teacher and pupil are correlative, twin-born; 
yea, triple-born, for the school is born with them, being 
the correlation of the other two. If the school did not 
thus exist organized in subjective consciousness, it could 
not exist in objective reality. This fact of self-conscious- 
hess, which is the origin and law of the school, is the 
point of departure in "The Philosophy of Teaching." All 
managing resolves itself into teaching, and all teaching 
takes form in managing. The two are the outside and 
the inside of the same process. 

The formal school arises when the function of self- 
instruction is delegated to another. This other, being 
farther removed from the pupil's real seif, secures a 
higher tension with that real seif. Thus the school, 
implicit in the nature of the individual, arises in the act 
of consciousness which differentiates into teacher and 
taught; and is formally organized when the pupil, or his 
agents, authorizes another to stand for his ideal. This 
illustrates again the fact that the school is a projection 
out of the nature of the individual himself. By his own 
nature he is pupil to himself as teacher. If this were 
not true, he could have no other teacher. The school 
is verily himself; and, as before shown, in rendering 
obedience to it, he but obeys his own nature. 

Again, the school appears to have a like nature with 
all other institutions, for all are but specializations and 
externalizations of the life of the individual. For 
instance, the individual has in himself the disposition, 
and to a certain extent the physical ability, to protect 



THE LAW EVOLVIXG TUE ORGANISM. 37 

himself in the rush and'violence of city life. He might, 
by training in courage and pugilistic qualities, and with 
the proper weapons of self-defence, protect himself; but 
instead of developing tliis aspect of his life, he delegates 
the function of self-defence to a police force, transform- 
ing his labor, performed more efficiently in another direc- 
tion because withdrawing himself from police duty, into 
the police service of another, through the medium of 
exchange in the form of city tax. So with the fire 
department, the board of health, the postal service, the 
court of justice, the manufactory, the surgical institute, 
the State, and every possible form of institutional life, — 
all are but specialized and externalized functions of the 
individual to the end of more efficient service, secured 
through some medium of exchange for service of the 
individual performed in the special direction of his own 
fitness. By the miracle of institutional and social life 
the individual transforms himself into the most skilful 
physician, lawyer, architect, engineer, pilot, minister, or 
teacher, as he may need; each of these is but the projec- 
tion of some specialized desire and faculty, to the end of 
his own more diverse and complete living. 

And so the faculty by which the individual instructs 
himself is made more efficient by giving it specialized 
objective form in another. Thus the school, and all other 
institutions, has a subjective origin in the nature, needs, 
and impulses of the individual. The most immediate and 
fundamental part of the external school organism, because 
serving as direct means to the unity of the pupil with his 



38 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

higher seif, is the teacher; and the problem of all prob- 
lems in school management is that of securing those 
qualities in the teacher which are in unity with the 
best interests and highest aims of the pnpil's life. 



Unifying Qualities itst the Teacher. 

The first step in the evolution of the outer organism 
is to make an objective differentiation corresponding to 
the subjective one, — the teacher differentiated from the 
other members of society who are to be taught. We must 
not forget that education is carried on by other agencies 
than those formally set apart for that purpose. The 
child's touch with his environment — with nature and 
with social and industrial life — has, perhaps, more influ- 
ence over him than the set lessons of the teacher. This 
fact saves him from the bungling work of the school- 
master. The teacher may work by forced and stupefying 
processes ; but nature and life, by more intimate sympathy 
and wiser Council, and by a constant and all-sided infhi- 
ence, counteract conventional methods. 

One is often surprised in noting how small the differ- 
ence between those who have enjoyed the best school 
training and those who have only intimate experierice 
with the world about them. This surprise comes from 
not taking into account the numerous educative forces 
incident to the activities of life. Said Eev. Mclntyre, 
"I remember the sneer of the first campaign, that Lincoln 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 39 

had only got six months' education. It was wrong: it 
should have been six months' schooling; he had only 
that, but he was the best educated man of his time." 
Shakespeare has likewise been reproached with lack of 
education; and this because he "knew little Latin and 
less Greek." But some one appropriately retorts that, 
what was of greater moment, the Latin and Greek writers 
did not know Shakespeare. It is a current reniark about 
people who stand out frora among their fellows because 
of greater power of thought, skill in using faculties, and 
depth of experience, but who have had but little schooling, 
th;it they lack education. Education does not consist in 
knowing certain definite things, as Greek, Latin, or 
mathematics, but in that power and versatility of thought 
and emotion which elevate life into truth and virtue, 
and which may come from any form of true and deep 
experience which the individual has with the world 
about bim. Contact with the world, as well as the 
tuition of the school, produces wealth of experience 
and ripe wisdom. The individual's whole environment 
educates him ; and the teacher, being but a small part 
of this, must not be accredited nor charged with the 
whole result. 

But the point touching our present discussion is the 
distinction between the teacher and the other educating 
agencies. The other forces work incidentally, while the 
teacher Labors directly and exclusively to the end of 
education. Nature teaches the child, but it does not 
plan to do so. Citizens of the state are taught by the 



40 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

State; yet teaching is not the state's direct business. 
The family and the church work more nearly by the 
direct process of Instruction ; yet their functions are not 
exclusively exercised in that direction. The church 
touches specifically one side of life, and this by inter- 
mittent process in the midst of the daily duties of those 
instructed. In the school, teacher and pupils both hold 
themselves apart to the one duty of teaching and learning. 
Members of the family instruct the children; but this is 
not their sole function, and the daily pressure of life is 
often so great as to prevent any systematic effort in that 
direction. The teacher is the one and only member of 
society whose sole business it is, by set plan and purpose, 
to develop the whole life of another. Of course he 
wisely leaves to the other institutions to do what they 
may indirectly do, — leaves the pupil to learn what the 
incidents of life force upon him. Why should the teacher 
teach the conventional ways of society, such as table 
manners and social etiquette, when the situations of life 
will rnore efficiently do so? Why teach a child that snow 
is white and cold, if he always sees snow in winter? or 
that one and one make two? — thus teaching what every 
Docld Weaver "knowed always; " or what would be learned 
in due time and by natural process. Why teach a pupil 
to vote, while the whole structure of society is such as 
to give him the necessary Instruction and force him to 
learn? Is a young man Coming to voting age likely to 
f orget the duty , when all political parties have an eye on 
him? and will he lack for Instruction when so many well 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 41 

prepared are eager to .give it without charging it up to 
the school fund? What the pupil must learn by daily 
contact with things should be left to the agencies of 
incidental Instruction. Yet the teacher must take into 
account all the unconscious processes of the other func- 
tions of society, and make them a part of his conscious 
processes. 

In the prececling discussion the school was shown in 
its deeper connection with all other institutions; it now 
appears different in having for its sole and direct aim the 
education of the individual, through an agent exclusively 
set apart for that purpose. It is obvious, therefore, 
that the first differentiating quality of the teacher is 
that of : — 

Freedom in the Vocation. — The teacher must be able to 
say, "This one thing I do, and frorn my own highest 
personal interest." The first principle of school manage- 
ment, in external application, requires that the conditions 
be made such that one can well afford, from the stand- 
point of self-interest, to devote himself to teaching. Of 
course the very fact that one in so doing must withdraw 
from some other pursuit requires that his remuneration 
be equal to that in the pursuit from which he withdraws. 
This at once necessitates a System of raising school funds. 
A teacher cannot be a teacher, with salary insutficient to 
Bupport himself without turning to odd Jobs to meet the 
necessities of private and professional life. This is not 
simply a question of competition with other professions, 
but a question of professional life or death. Just in 



42 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

proportion as a teacher has to plough in summer in order 
that he may teach in winter, he is a farraer, and not a 
teacher. The salary must support a teacher coraf ortably , 
and enable him to keep abreast with his profession. This 
amount the ethics of the Situation requires of every 
school board, whether or not it be in excess of that 
paid in other professions. Professional freedom must 
be secured. 

Usually increase of teachers' salaries is urged on the 
ground that other professions pay better. Now a teacher 
cannot urge such an argument, for fear of being reminded 
that this is a free country, and that he should himself 
choose one of the lucrative vocations, or quit grumbling. 
Besides, the Statement that other professions pay better 
may be questioned. While the poor pay of the teacher 
is proverbial, so is that of the minister and the lawyer. 
Think of the donation party of the one, and of the 
starving period of the other! From ten to twenty thou- 
sand dollar salaries are found among doctors, ministers, 
and lawyers; but they are also found among teachers. 
Teachers' salaries are, perhaps, as good as those in any 
other profession. But this proves nothing from the stand- 
point of the law of the school, which requires absolutely 
that the teacher be freed from the necessity of engaging in 
other activities while striving to follow his own vocation. 
He must be enabled to differentiate himself, and then re- 
quired to do so. 

The salary, however, is not the only personal incluce- 
ment to engage in a given vocation. The question is 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE OKGANISM. 43 

more properly determined by the opportunity offered 
for personal culture. One should choose that vocation 
which requires work as nearly as possible in the line 
of his own development. The greater the divergence 
between the line of one's Spiritual growth and the line 
of activity required in a given trade or profession, the 
greater must be the salary paid, to offset the loss by 
giving opportunity to make life whole in other ways tlian 
by the labor in which one is engaged. The wood-sawyer 
needs pay enough to enable him to seek other opportun i- 
ties of growth than those furnished by his work; but the 
teacher's activities are more nearly in the line of his own 
development. Whatever be the occupation or profession, 
it is incidental to the main business of life, — that of self- 
realization. A teacher may, by comparison, rejoice in a 
less salary than that paid to a policeman, a railroad 
conductor, or a bank cashier. Who would resign a five- 
hundred-dollar professorship for a thousand-dollar brakes- 
manship on a freight train? No, salary is but one of 
many factors securing personal freedom in the vocation of 
teaching. The law of school management requires only 
that the collective inducements be made sufficient to 
fully differentiate the teacher from the other members of 
society. The teacher, while aiding the pupil to realize 
his purpose in life, must be enabled to realize his own. 

But the management, after making conditions for free. 
happy, and advantageous Service for those qualified to 
teach, must apply the law anew to secure other unifying 
qualities in the teacher. While the adoption of the pro- 



44 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

fession as a private good is absolutely essential, and the 
first resting-point in the evolution of tlie organism, a 
teacher is not a teacher by tliat fact alone. To decide to 
teacli is not to become a teacher. The teacher, in serving 
as a means to the unity of the pupil with his ideal seif, 
can do so only through being in unity with what the pupil 
is to become. Hence management must secure in the 
teacher : — 

The Pupil's Ideal. — The unity within the pupil is 
secured through unity with the teacher. Unless the 
teacher is the better seif of the pupil, he is not a teacher. 
Teaching, in its fundamental aspect, is not a process of 
going through the thought of the lesson with the pupil, 
but that of constant readjustment to the advancing poten- 
tial seif of the pupil, — to the next best possible thought, 
impulse, and resolution of his growing life. In the very 
nature of the teaching process, as shown on page 4 of 
" The Philosophy of Teaching " and page 17 of the present 
treatment, there must be identification of the teacher' s 
life with that of the pupil. In this process the teacher 
is the advancing ideal of the pupil, and by the tension thus 
set up draws the pupil unto himself, which is also the 
pupil's seif. 

This is not true simply in a general and abstract way; 
for in every detail of teaching the teacher must, in the 
very nature of the process, adjust himself — his thought, 
his feeling, his life — to what the pupil ought next to 
become. The teacher is not merely the remote and un- 
attainable ideal of the pupil, but, in the act of teaching, 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 45 

becomes the very near 'and present lielp to the next 
iinmediate good. The remote end is realized by a con- 
stant descent of the ideal into living touch with the real, 
llence the teacher, tobe a teacher, must be the advanced, 
realized ideal of the pupil. It is not sufficient for the 
teacher to set up imaginary ends and theories for realizing 
them in the pupil; he himself must be the realized end. 
It is scarcely worth while for a teacher to set up as an 
end in the pupil the formation of correct habits and forms 
of thought without having realized them in himself. A 
teacher who is not able to think with scientific patience 
and precision, cannot train to such patience and precision. 
The unifying grasp of thought can be made firm only by 
him who has such grasp. Truth-loving can be cultivated 
only by him who is a truth-lover. Strength, harmony, 
and beauty of character spring only frora the touch of 
him whose character is strong, harmonious, and beautiful. 
The teacher's qualification is the teacher himself; and this 
must be taken in no remote way, and as mere example, 
but in the sense of intimate fusion of his life-current with 
that of the pupil. 

This introduces a distinction which further emphasizes 
the law of the pupil's ideal in the teacher, — the distinc- 
tion between conscious and unconscious tuition. The 
teacher, by conscious plan and immediate effort, by 
definite and formal Instruction, draws the pupil into 
his own more perfect thought and life; but much of the 
influence exerted by the teacher is unconscious and with- 
out forethought, — an influence, indeed, which plan and 



46 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

purpose would certainly defeat. So susceptible are we 
to the sileut infiuence of others that we are supposed to 
be permanently changed in passing another on tlie street. 
We do know, both by experience and Observation, tliat the 
mysterious alcliemy of infiuence works with marvellous 
power on the young who are in the continual presence 
of those whoin they admire. Pupils instinctively copy 
the teacher, even to the fault of mannerisms ; from which, 
and all other defects of manner and life, therefore, the 
teacher should be free. But the pupil assimilates, as 
well, the beautiful traits and the wholesome spirit, which, 
like a fragrance, fills the air about noble-minded and 
warm-hearted men and women. Not so much by the 
fixed and hard grooves of Instruction as by the silent 
worship of the heart does the child flower into beautiful 
life, and ripen into worthy manhood or womanhood. 
Every teacher should be to his pupil what the " Great 
Stone Face," in Hawthorne's story by that title, was to 
Ernest. When a child living in the Valley among the 
mountains, Ernest's heart was touchecl by the beautiful 
and benign soul expressed in the "Great Stone Face." 
He was told of the prophecy of the Coming man whom the 
face typified. From Ernest's childhood to his old age, 
renowned characters came to the Valley, heralded, each in 
succession, as the man of prophecy; but in each case 
Ernest shook his head in doubt and hung it in sadness. 
"Will he never come?" asked Ernest, and patiently 
waited ancl worshipped in silence. Late in life he 
thought he had surely found the man in the poet who 



TIIK LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 47 

had arrived, and whose words Eraest liad pondered. But 
not so; yet the poet had the insight to discern the long- 
sought man. Ernest, witli face illumined by the setting 
sun and the radiance of eloqnence, as he addressed Ins 
little congregation against the mountain-side, stood trans- 
figured by the life he had so long idealized in the "Great 
Stone Face." The man of propliecy was Ernest himself; 
he had grown to be what he had worshipped and prayed 
for in another. 

A reformed convict, some twenty years after his release, 
thanked the good priest for the start given him on leaving 
prison. The priest asked what he had said. "Ah! it 
was not what you said; it was the touch." The story has it 
tliat an eaglet hatehed with a brood of goslings, nnconscious 
of.its eagle nature, kept to earth with its unnatural mates, 
tili an eagle, hovering over, swooped down upon it, and 
touched it into the triumphant life of the free upper air. 

Thus, by the admiration and worship of a superior life, 
does the pupil realize the worth and beauty of that life. 
The closest and most precise method of Instruction does 
not measure the teacher's responsibility. After all, the 
pupil may continue to walk on earth among earthly 
things, unless quickened by a touch from the hovering 
spirit in the higher lifo. 

Ami so the teacher, who enters the vocation from his 
own interest, is permitted to do so on the condition of 
heing the ideal life of the pupil. But he cannot be 
merely a passive ideal; he must actually lay hold upor 
the pupil. So far the approach has been made from the 



48 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

side of the pupil: irrst, by indiTcements to labor for him; 
and second, by laying liold upon tlie teacher's thought and 
life as his own ideal. Now the tension works from the 
other side also. Since the teacher is the pupil's other 
seif, he should strive for the pupil as the pupil should 
strive for him seif. This organic unity between the 
teacher and the pupil is the standpoint from which to 
answer all questions of management arising from their 
mutual relations. In fact, this is the standpoint for the 
Solution of all ethical questions. All conduct should be 
regulated by regarding "thy neighbor as thyself." The 
teacher's ethics, therefore, falls under the universal law, 
and requires an all-absorbing enthusiasm for the child, as 
the high-spirited individual has for his own ideal. This dis- 
interested devotion to the good of the pupil is known as;. 

Professional Spirit — 1. Professional spirit, in general, 
is the feeling of urgency produced by an ideal, in order that 
the ideal may realize itself. It is the craving for the ideal 
to such an extent that its realization is both the motive and 
the reward of the labor required to realize it. Palissy, in 
Longfellow's "Keramos," is caught by the ideal of a new 
enamel, and works "with such good cheer;" yet his 
"rustic wares scarce find him bread from day to day." 

" Who is this in the suhurbs here ? 

This madman, as the people say, 
Who breaks his tahles and his chairs 
To feed his furnace fires, nor cares 
Who goes unfed if they are fed, 
Nor who may live if they are dead ? 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 49 

This alchemist, with hollow cheeks, 
And suuken, searehing eyes, who seeks, 
By miugled earths aud ores combiued 
With poteucy of fire, to find 
Some uew enamel, lmrd aud bright, 
His dream, his passiou, bis delight 1 

" O Palissy ! witbiu thy breast 
Burned tlie hot fever of unrest ; 
Tbine was the prophet's visiou, thine 
The exultation, the divine 
Insauity of noble minds, 
That never falters nor abates, 
But labors and endures and waits, 
Till all that it foresees it finds, 
Or what it cannot find creates." 

Yes, professional spirit, in its poetic form, is "the hot 
fever of unrest," "the divine insanity of noble minds," 
laboring, enduring, and waiting to find or create what is 
foreseen. Labor is drudgery or joy, depending on whether 
the laborer is inspired by an ideal. Seeking ideals is real 
and true living, and only through this can life reach its 
füll fruition. The daily routine of the hardest labor is 
transformed into life and delight when some ideal in the 
labor takes possession of the heart. When the master, in 
Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," received the order, — 

" Build me straight, worthy master, 
Stanch aud strong, a goodly vessel, 
That shall laugh at all disaster, 
And with wave aud whirlwiud wrestle," — 

the poet says : — 

" The merchaut's word 
Delighted the master heard ; 
For his heart was in bis work, aud the heart 
Giveth graee uuto every art." 



50 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

The master was deliglited because of his opportunity 

to build the ideal vessel, — "a goodly vessel, that shall 

laugh at all disaster, and with wave and whirlwind 

wrestle." In this contract there was no delay, nor 

parleying and competitive bidding. The merchant knew 

well that he could trust the man whose heart was in his 

work, for his heart would give grace unto the art; and the 

master had no conditions to ask, so delighted was he at 

the opportunity to work out his ideal vessel. And the 

joy of labor was contagious ; and in the long, hot days of 

toil, — 

" He who listened heard now and then 
The song of the master and his men : 
' Build nie straight, worthy master,' " etc. 

A skilful shoemaker, who was delighted with his labor, 
and who was always talkin g about it, when asked how it 
was possible to find so much pleasure in the monotonous 
exercise of driving pegs, replied that he tried each time 
to drive the peg a little "slicker." Each time he set up 
the ideal driving of a peg, and drove to the ideal. The 
old farmer who, in spite of himself, leaps the fence and 
the ditch to come straight to the tree that he is to feil, 
cannot understand the plodding motion of the hired hand, 
as he takes the beaten path around through the open gate- 
way. But both move along the line of least resistance. 
The conditions are not such that the hired man can so 
easily put his heart into his work, and so he puts his time 
in it. How much it would aid the labor problem to secure 
conditions so that each laborer has an idea of his own to 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 51 

work cmt; so that it become not a question of enduring 
his toil, but eager opportunity. 

As much as we may say that teachers and others labor 
for money, yet it is also true that opportunity to realize 
a cherished idea is a Controlling force in every healthy- 
minded person. There may be men who desire to be 
bishop, to be called bishop, as Ruskin puts it; but there 
are men who desire to be bishop because they see in it 
opportunity to work out a spiritual good in the church. 
There may be men who desire to be governor, just to be 
called governor, and for whatever adventitious gain in 
standing and notoriety such a position would bring; but 
there are men who desire to be governor to bring about a 
firmer administration of justice. There may be men who 
seek the State superintendency because of the distinction 
attending such a noble office; but there are men who 
could feel no such elevation, because possessed by educa- 
tional doctrine and conviction, which sweep away petty 
and ignoble considerations. There may be teachers whose 
motive is the pay, and pride of position; but tliere are 
teachers who seek labor because they feel that they can 
secure an educational result which is impersonal and 
disinterested ; they feel a potency for good in them, and 
crave most of all an opportunity to realize it. It is use- 
less to ask whether a teacher labor for salary; it is only 
proper to ask whether he labor for a disinterested good 
while supported by his salary. An increase of salary does 
not lessen professional interest, but rather increases it, 
by freeing the teacher from the anxiety of self-support. 



52 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

The more salary the teacher gets, tlie less does he need to 
work for it; the less his professional spirit is starved by 
foreign considerations. Yet external conditions cannot 
quench or modify much the genuine professional spirit. 
It will "burn with the hot fever of unrest." 

The true professional spirit of the teacher develops 
through two lower phases. In the lowest phase the 
teacher has the heart set on skilful manipulation of 
school machinery, — the perfect way of moving classes, 
calling the roll, asking questions, manipulating devices 
ornamenting school-room, — in short, the perfect military 
and material side of the school. This is a worthy, but 
not the highest, phase of professional spirit. 

The next phase in the ascending order of professional 
spirit is that in which the teacher's interest lies in the 
skilful manipulation of mental processes in the art of 
learning. His ideal is the perfect movement of the 
child's mind through a given bit of subject-matter. It 
does not include the sum total of the educative processes, 
but only the subject-matter dealt with in individual recita- 
tions, or in given portions of subject-matter, — as the multi- 
plication of one fraction by another, the raising of cotton, 
or the " Song of Hiawatha. " All this is a worthy ideal, 
and the immediate end for which the perfect mechanics of 
the school exist, as sought by the ideal of the preceding 
phase. 

The highest phase of professional spirit has its ideal 
in the development of the child as an entire process. All 
the individual lessons are held in the unity of the ideal 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 53 

unfolding of the chikl's life. Each lesson is now seen, 
not ouly in its individual nature, but in its final issue. 
The perfect being toward which the child moves is the 
conscious principle, guiding the concrete work of lesson- 
hearing, and also the lower phase of external manipula- 
tion. An individual lesson may be very skilful and 
beautiful, Avhen considered merely in itself, but found 
bluiulering and deformed when examined in light of the 
final good. The passion of the teacher must be for the 
ultimate good of the child, and not the immediate seeming 
good. The feeling which arises froni teaching with a 
consciousness of the ultimate good is the highest possible 
phase of professional spirit. It is much more difficult to 
attain to than either of the preceding, and but compara- 
tively f ew reach it, — perhaps difficult because it is the 
highest generalization of all the educative forces. Enthu- 
siasm for the child, and not for machinery and pretty 
lesson processes, regulated by consciousness of the rational 
process of educating him, is truly professional spirit. 
This is the point at which the teacher reaches " the divine 
iusanity of noble minds." Palissy attained it working in 
clay. Why can't we, working in life? 

The great teachers who have come down to us through 
history are so because of their de Lotion, yea, their un- 
bounded enthusiasm, for the pupil. Can we doubt it after 
reading the life of Pestalozzi, Froebel, Arnold, Horace 
Mann, Mark Hopkins? The theorist and the philosopher 
rnay make their mark as such, but the man -or woman 
known, esteemed, honored, and loved as a teacher, must 



54 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

become so through intense sympathy with the unfolding 
life of others, — a sympatliy which gives no peace except 
in the self-forgetful labor of uurturing the life of those 
struggiing for better things. 

The requirenient of professional spirit, by which the 
teacher forgets himself in the pupil, is not in conflict with 
the requireraent of freedora in the profession, by which 
the teacher serves from personal interest. Rather they 
are in perfect harmony, — in fact, organic unity, for man 
cannot find his life except by losing it. His subjective 
processes of growth must be absorbed in some objective 
product feit to be good on its own acconnt. Those attain- 
ing the highest excellence are not self-seekers. Man 
cannot grow in charity by thinking of his growth in 
charity. Patriotism flourishes best in him who is too 
busy in his country's Service to think of his patriotism. 
When Wilberforce was heroically devoting his life to 
freeing the slaves in the West Indies, he was reminded 
by a good Christian lady that he was neglecting religion 
and the welfare of his soul. He replied that he was too 
busy to know that he had a soul. Think you that he was 
not saving it? There is no way to attain to moral sub- 
limity except by tension with a universal, objective good, 
which obliterates self-consciousness in the seeking. The 
same law holds whether in the moral or intellectual life ; 
no personal height can be attained by thinking on the 
seif as attaining it. Self-sacrifice is the law of self- 
realization; but this is not the passive yielding up of 
life, rather the hisdiest form of self-assertion. Hence the 



THE LAW EV0LV1NG THE ORGANISM. 55 

teacher, from tlie highest Standpoint of self-interest, must 
forget himself in his zeal to save his pupil. 

It seems mnch easier for tlie kinclergarten teacher to 
obey this law than for tlie professor in tlie university. 
The latter cloes incleed lose himself, but too often in his 
subject instead of his Student. The modern university, 
with its intense spirit of research, is an opportunity for 
distinction in scholarship, and original production of 
learned theses. This clearly divides tlie faculty into 
two functions, — that of teacher and Student; but tlie law 
still holds that a teacher is a teacher only in devoting 
himself to the student. Of course the professor is of 
more value to the student in being a living, growing man 
himself; but there is a temptation, too strong for some to 
bear, of leaving the student out of the account altogether. 
The absorption in his line of investigation, and lack of 
interest in the personal welfare of his students, seems to 
be the spirit of the modern university professor. The stu- 
dent sometimes puts it as ''lack of soul;" but this feeling 
may arise from an unnatural craving for attention on the 
part of the student, and a failure to make allowance for the 
fact that the requirements of the subject grow more rigid , 
and those of the student for direct help less so, on reach- 
ing the university phase of school work. In the kinder- 
garten the subject taught is easily managed, so far as 
the knowledge required is concerned; but the pupil here 
must have immediate, constant, and sympathetic atten- 
tion. In either case the teacher is a teacher, and a great 
teacher, jast in proportion as he, by generous sympathy, 



56 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

compasses, inspires, and guides the life intrusted to his 
care ; and no more than the kindergarten teacher can the 
university professor escape the law. Yet we read in the 
"Educational Review" for January, 1895, on "Necessary 
Reforms in the Colleges ," that : — 

"In the zeal for special research which . . . has become 
the ideal aim of much College Instruction, it has come 
about that only the most brilliant scholars are chosen to 
be instructors, regardless of their lack of more strictly 
professional preparation and experience. . . . ' These 
men, generally students of high standing, who, after 
graduation, have seen something of German universities, 
cannot conceive their function as did the worthy teacher 
of a hundred years ago. . . . Some teachers of the old 
school naturally remain, — teachers in whom the moral 
and personal relation to their pupils is still predominant; 
but the main concern of our typical young professor is 
not his pupils at all. It is his science. . . . But, 
generally speaking, he wishes to be a scholar, and is a 
teacher only by accident, — only because scholars are as 
yet supported by institutions whose primary object is the 
education of youth. . . .'* 

"The attitude of professors of the type Dr. Santayana 
has described, toward associates of what I deem a better 
type, is very clearly disclosed by such remarks as the 
following. A prominent professor in one of the foremost 
American Colleges, speaking of a distinguished colleague 

1 Quoted by the writer from Dr. George Santayana on the spirit and 
ideals of one of our celebrated American Universities. 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGAXISM. 57 

recently, said to an acquaintance , ' Oh, he 's nothing but 
a teacher!' Uncler similar circuinstances, a professor in 
another well-known College was overheard to use nearly 
the same langnage, referring to a colleague whose naine 
is almost a household word aniong teachers and scholara : 
' He 's a liiere teacher.' So far Lad these eminent gentle- 
nien adopted the view that scholarship and enthnsiasin 
for research are the supreme essentials to snccess and 
superiority as professors, that they could employ the 
unwarranted assnmption not only without attenipt at 
proof, but in terms of sincere contempt for eminent col- 
leagues. Could the Speakers know the frequent coin- 
parisons, highly unfavorable to themselves, made by some 
of the best students of their respective Colleges between 
thein and the colleagues they tried to belittle, they might 
be greatly surprised and chagriued." 

2. But professional spirit is much more than a suscepti- 
bility and eagerness to respond to the pupil's need, — 
more than blind enthusiasms for what the pupil's life 
holds in prophecy. In addition, there must be conscious- 
ness of skill in aiding the pupil to realize the highest 
ideal of human life. The teacher must feel confident, 
through a knowledge of the nature and laws of spiritual 
growth, of safe and certain guidance to the end sought. 
Professional spirit is thus a sense of the power to accom- 
plish an end by a rational process, — a process by which 
every step in detail is feit in relation to the ultimate end. 
The teacher must rise above the consciousness of the 
external means, and of the mental processes involved in 



58 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT, 

teaching a particular lesson, to the consciousness of the 
universal value to the child of eveiy teaching aet. A 
teacher niay be conscious of the external means by which 
to teach a cube to a child, and may have analyzed the 
process by which he forms his concept cube ; but unless he 
can state and feel the value of the cube-experience in 
terms of the pupil's unfolding life, he has no intelligent 
reason for, and no professional spirit in, producing the 
experience. He may know the material means and mental 
process by which the pupil forms his picture of the earth, 
but he can have no reason for causing its formation, and 
cannot rationally and with professional spirit do so, unless 
he knows how such a process and product is to aid the 
pupil in the Solution of life's problem. 

Every lesson the teacher hears alters in some way, and 
permanently, the pupil's whole after life. A pebble 
dropped in the Atlantic disturbs all its waters, the waters 
of the Pacific, the solid parts of the earth, the air above, 
and through these the cosmic forces of the universe. 
Every lesson re-shapes the pupil's entire life; gives it new 
motion, new current, new tendencies, and, through the 
wonderful alchemy of influences, it modifies the spiritual 
forces of the world. Ordinarily, the teacher's conscious- 
ness does not go beyond the here and the now of the 
lesson. Yet every time the pupil's life is touched, the 
waves circle out to the other shore, and the teacher should 
keep his eye on the other shore. The teacher must never 
be satisfied, and never can be professional in the highest 
sense, until he becomes conscious of the ultimate end in 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 59 

the process of its realization. And this must be taken in 
no abstract and general sense ; it means that this teacher, 
here and now, in this particnlar First Reader lesson, is 
vividly conscious of its füll life-meaning in the act of con- 
ducting the lesson. In general propositions we admit all 
this; but what needs to be insisted on is the necessity that 
the teacher in his daily, concrete teaching experience, be 
stimulated and guided by the largest meaning which the 
lesson has for the child. All this is but an aspect of the 
law of unity; for this law requires the teacher to keep 
himself in unity with the future seif of the pupil, in order 
that the pupil may reach that seif. 

Fusing now the first and second elements of professional 
spirit, we have the consciousness of realizing ideals by 
rational procedure, — procedure through organized steps 
to a clearly defined end. 

3. If we draw more completely under the law of unity, 
we shall find professional spirit to be a still fuller experi- 
ence than yet indicated. The seif which the pupil is to 
become, and with which the teacher mus't be identified, 
is the thought and spirit of the world objective to the 
pupil. The teacher must compass in his own life the 
organic unity of the pupil and the outer world ; stated 
in a superficial way as knowledge of the pupil and of the 
subject-matter. But this must be a knowledge of the two 
as one; for the pupil — this seif to be taught — includes 
science, literature, history, etc., either really or poten- 
tially. These are his present, and are to be his future, 
experiences, connected»by one whole of life activity. The 



60 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

teacher is the connecting instrument between the old 
experience and the new, having brought both into terms 
of bis own life. 

Tbe branches to be taught are only processes of thought 
or forms of experience by whicli the pnpil finds his life 
in the infinite life about hiin. Therefore, when it is said 
that the teacher must be the other seif to the pupil, it is 
implied that this objective worlcl to the pupil is already 
made the teacher's own. He must know from experience 
the relation of the thought and spirit of the world to the 
growing life of his pupil. The little flower has whispered 
to him of the infinite, and he must know what message 
it has to his blindly craving pupil. The lily has spoken 
to him its thought, plan, and purpose; its innocence, 
purity, and beauty; and he feels by sympathy how much 
the more limited life of his pupil needs such experiences. 
He has feit the strength, self-sacrifice, and heroism of 
Socrates, and knowing that his pupil must grow in firm- 
ness of virtue, brings Socrates' life into the pupil's 
experience. The teacher must see to it that the heavens 
delare the glory of God to the pupil, but they must first 
have declared it to the teacher. Thus the soul of the 
objective world is transformed into the life of the pupil 
through the experience of the teacher. 

Professional spirit thus involves a consciousness of 
subject-matter as connected experience in the process of 
spiritual growth. It cannot be urged too often that a 
teacher must know his subject in and of itself; that he 
cannot teach what he does not know; and that he cannot 



THE LAW EVOLVlNG THE ORGANISM. 61 

teach even what he cloes teach without knowing vastly 
more thau the pupil is expected to learn. The wealth of 
experience one has had in a subject is the largest deter- 
niining factor in his professional preparation, for this 
experience is the spiritual medium by which the pupil 
coines into unity with the life of the objective world, 
which is his larger seif. But we often hear that knowl- 
edge of subject-matter alone is not sufficient; that there 
must be knowledge of methods of Instruction. The sharp 
Opposition usually drawn between these two seenis to be 
unfortunate; yet it will serve to enforce the truth. In a 
Convention of teachers, some of whom are trained in the 
normal school and some in the College, we expect to hear 
from one side the imputation of a lack of professional 
training, and from the other the sneer at method in an 
empty head; because, perhaps, both are somewhat empty, 
— one in not seeing that the subject has the method 
within itself, and the other in failing to note that method 
must find itself in the subject; it cannot dangle in the air. 
Whatever it may be called, the teacher must see his subject 
as an unfolding experience in the life of the pupil, and 
not simply as a System of thought having its own logical 
coherence. Knowledge of subject-matter is a System of 
thought, organized about some central principle announced 
by the subject-matter itself; but the teacher must organize 
the subject-matter about the life of the pupil ; it is means 
now to the child as end. It is not a question of logical 
coherence wholly, but also of chronological experience 
in the learner. At any rate, the subject, in the most 



62 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

fundamental view, is a mental process, rather than a 
prodnct; and a process has method. A consciousness of 
the process of a subject in becoming tbe realized seif of 
the learner is, by the law of unity, an essential element 
in professional spirit. 

This last requirement, more than any other, puts the 
greatest strain upon the teacher; and is therefore the 
highest test of professional preparation. It not only 
requires a knowledge of the psychology of the learner, 
and of the logic of the subjects by which he is taught, but 
of the unity of the two in an educative process. This 
process is bewilcleringly complex, because of the many- 
sidedness of the learner's life, and of the world which 
administers to the interests of that life; and this if life 
is considered only by cross section, but much more when 
viewed in its on-going, with new tieeds, interests, and 
aspirations at every turn. This introduces the most com- 
plex and baffling conception with which the teacher has 
to cleal, — the Course of Study. This is made up of 
co-existent (practically) and successive experiences with 
the objective world of thought as formulated in the 
branches of the school course. The needs of child life 
at any one period can be satisfied only by touching the 
most diverse lines and phases of subject-matter; and with 
every stage of progress these assume new divisions and 
varied aspects. What lines of work fuse most naturally 
and helpfully into a present life experience, and what 
phases of each follow in a natural order of growth, is the 
greatest of all problems for the teacher. The emphasis 



TUE LAW EVOLVIXG THE ORGANISM. 03 

'/wen to this problem at preseut is a hopeful sign. "Cor- 
relation " and "sequence of studies " are capital worda in 
the teacher's vocabulary ; especially so if not taken to 
mean the stiff and formal program of parallel columns, 
witli yearly cross sections für mere convenience of school 
mackinery; but in the true and inward sense of variety, 
unity, and volume of experience, moving by steady progress 
to full-orbed manhood and womanhood. A course of study 
is a Statement of the process of self-realization in terms of 
subject-matter; it is growing snbjective experience put in 
objective form, determined not by logic but by the interests 
and necessities of life. 

For practical purposes the whole course of study must 
be worked out in quite minute details. JSTo matter if a 
teacher teach but a single grade, that work cannot be 
done intelligently without a sense of its organic relation 
to the whole. aSTothing is more fatal to professional spirit 
than for a teacher in a graded school to passively accept a 
course planned by the Superintendent. The teacher must 
fiel himself to be in harmony with the whole course, which 
requires a sense of the whole ; besides, the harmony and 
rhythm of the whole course requires intelligent adjust- 
ment to the whole by each who conducts a part. Such 
a detailed statement as required cannot here be even 
Sketched, for this would require a special treatise on a 
course of study. Nothing further can here be done than 
to emphasize the necessity of a clear coneeption of such 
a course on the part of every teacher. The underlying 
principles I have tried to present on pages 246-260 in 
"The Philosöphy of Teaching." 



64 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

And thus professional spirit has grown to be conscious- 
ness of the unfolcling life of the learner in forrns and 
processes of subject-matter. 

4. Having brought the teacher into this elevation of 
professional life, it seems at first that nothing more conld 
be desired. But it will be remembered from tbe irrst 
chapter that the teacher comes into unity with the pnpil 
through the elaborate machinery of the school Organiza- 
tion. Much of this at best he has to wield as a nieans to 
the teaching process. If his care be limited to his own 
school-room, there is much of manipulation indirectly 
related to the teaching act; the teacher must bring all 
the conditions and forces into the central process above 
describecl. And this requires that, along with his own 
sense of immediate unity with the life of the pupil, there 
be sensitiveness to the unity of the whole organism which 
conditions his success in the act of Instruction. 

Lack of sensitiveness to the unity of the organism is 
the chief source of failure in school management. The 
teacher who does not at all times feel that the school is 
a whole with focused energy, will necessarily permit the 
dissolution of the organism. If, for instance, the sense 
of unity is so obtuse as not to be disturbed by the young 
lady who does fancy needlework in the recitation, or as 
to permit the teacher to pass to the back of the room to 
engage in a private conversation with a pupil, nothing is 
to be expected but disorder and confusion throughout. 

This sensitiveness to unity arises from the form and 
habit of organic thought, — of grasping diversity into unity. 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 65 

It requires a great stress of conception to hold into unity 
such a complex object and process as the school. What 
the teacher needs is a severe course of mental training 
to grasp complex functions into a Single process. This 
training is not peculiar to school management, but is 
secured by the proper form of thinking any subject. To 
think rigidly the human body as an organism secures 
the proper habit and form of thought for gras'ping the 
school as an organism. To see all the parts in the great 
panorama of history as co-operating to the single issue of 
a great principle is to prepare the mind for the complex 
conception which is the basis of practical school manage- 
ment. Any discussion of school management which yields 
only a loose aggregate of topics and rules counteracts in 
habit of thought more than it contributes by its generous 
Bupply of precepts. All this suggests the important 
principle that a teacher must not have too much faith in 
immediate, short, and direct processes of preparation; but 
must know that whatever trains the mind to its perfect 
work gives the needed special preparation for any Situa- 
tion and duty of school life; that there is no \vay to 
prepare himself , or Ins pupils either, for practical duties, 
but to train himself to fundamental forms and habits of 
thought and life. Hence the teacher who would bring 
his school into unity and harmony of process must come 
to the work with a keen sense of unity and harmony, 
grounded in thorough training in organic forms and habits 
of thought. To make the school in form of unity, the 
teacher must first have reduced himself to that form, — 

5 



66 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

into an abiding consciousness of unity in presence of the 
school organism. This is the final element sought in 
professional spirit. 

Professional consciousness has now grown to be quite 
complex and organic. First, there appeared the self- 
forgetful sympathy and enthusiasni for the pupil in the 
general interests and aspirations of Ins lif-e; second, the 
pupil 's ideal was clearly grasped in the process of its 
unfolding, giving rise to a definite sense of the process of 
self-realization ; third, the objective world appeared in 
organic relation to the subjective process, giving rise to 
the consciousness of organic unity between the subjective 
and the objective seif; and fourth, there arose the con- 
sciousness of the unity of the external organism with the 
process of unity between teacher and pupil. These are 
the elements of professional spirit in the order of evolu- 
tion, under the force of the law of unity discovered in 
the first chapter ; and, taken altogether, form the attribute 
in the individual denoted by the word teacher. These 
elements, therefore, in their organic order, suggest a 
definite scheine for the examination of the teacher. It 
is not proper here to make out in detail the questions 
and directions for such a test, but it might be well for 
the reader to do so; and, after comparing with those 
curreutly used, imagine the result in substituting the 
new for the old. We hesitate and falter before such 
ideals ; yet the only manly and helpful thing to do is 
to face them fairly and hopefully. We may not reach 
our highest ideals, certainly not the ideal of ideals, which 



THE LAW EVÜLVING THE OUGANISM. 07 

would be God Hims.elf ; but there is no high and worthy 
effort except in faith of the ultimate reality of ideals. 
Falter before tliem we may, but we cannot escape living 
and acting ander them. 

Unifying Conditions of Teacher and Pupils. 

Let it be constantly held that the primary unity sought 
is that between the pupil's real and ideal seif; that every 
teaching act should bring the pupil into unity with his 
next best seif. By this unity as a Standard, the qualities 
of the teacher have been outlined in the preceding chapter. 
But that these qualities may be effective, the teacher must 
come into living touch with the pupil. We are now con- 
cerned, therefore, with the conditions of unity between 
teacher and pupils, — a secondary unity as a means to the 
primary. 

The unifying qualities in the teacher needed develop- 
ment, but the unifying qualities in the pupil must be 
assumed as the basis of the whole process. The school 
arises out of the impulse of the student to unity with his 
higher life, and hence his impulse to unity with his 
teacher. We must admit, as a basis of the school pro- 
cess, the fact that the pupil is naturally inclined to learn, 
and to join with one who will guide him. This is the 
fundamental premise in the argument that a school is 
defective when pupils are adverse to attendanoo. Tf the 
school-house is a house of life, and learning a process of 
living, how .can school work be repulsive, except on the 



68 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

assumption tliat it is antagonistic to .the interests of life. 
If the pupil must think of the school as a task and 
imprisonment, insteacl of joyous, free life, something 
must be wrong with the school rather than with the 
pupil. Barring the question of perverted habits and 
tastes, the teacher can have no higher criterion for his 
work than the joyous and eager school-going which results 
from his Instruction. Since the school arises from the 
student's impulse of growth, and is a process of that 
growth, his own consciousness of growth, with the accom- 
panying satisfaction, must be the ultimate Standard of 
testin g efh'ciency. If students cease to elect the work of 
a professor, this evidence ought to convince the president 
of the professor's inefficiency; and if all professors were 
thus abandoned, it would be attributed to worthlessness 
of the Institution, rather than stubborn perversity in the 
students. The student's desire to go to school, when the 
conditions of true living are supplied, is the ultimate fact 
and test of school work. A compülsory school law is 
compulsory to parents rather than to pupils; it is to 
protect the pupil against the invasion of his rights by 
parents and others. This law is an enactment by the 
needs of the pupil's own life, and sanctioned by his more 
developecl reason as embodied in others; it is nothing 
more than a legalized expression of the student's school- 
going desire. 

In the case of the teacher it is found necessary to offer 
inducements to enter the vocation; but the very nature 
of the pupil's life craves being taught; so rauch so, that 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 69 

he pays for the opportunity of co-operating with the 
teacher in forming the school. Hence we cannot speak 
of securing qualites of unity in the pupil, as was neees- 
sary in the case of the teacher, but only of the pupil's 
oonditions of unity. The pupil demands, besicles certain 
qualities in the teacher, the conditions by which he may 
enter into concrete and living unity with the teacher. 
Whatever his qualifications, the teacher standing apart is 
of no service to the pupil. The first and most general 
oondition is that which secures : — 

Personal Contact. — Teaching cannot be carried on in 
absence of the pupil, although a faint attempt is sonie- 
times made through correspondence. Since the pupil is 
to enjoy the general elevating influence of the teacher, 
he must be brought within the atmosphere of the teacher. 
Personal touch is absolutely essential to the influence of 
the life-giving principle. The teacher, as the unconscious 
ideal of the pupil, has no power in the absence of the 
pupil; the radius of the charmed circle is measured by 
the distinct intonations of the voice, the sparkle of the 
eye, and the bearaing of the soul in the countenance. 

And the same condition is no less rigidly required by 
direct Instruction. Such, when possible by correspond- 
ence, lacks vivacity, flexibility, and power. Except in 
the living presence of the pupil, the teacher cannot adjust 
himself to the varying nioods and unexpected movements 
of the mind in the process of learning. Especially exact- 
ing is this law in teaching children. On account of the 
child's inability to hold a continuous line of thought, the 



70 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

process of teaching would be instantly obstructed by its 
withdrawal from the scliool-room. The longer a pupil 
can hold himself to a proposed line of investigation, tbe 
more may be free himself from the presence of the teacher; 
and complete freedom is gained on condition of complete 
self-control. This law is clearly marked in practice; for 
while the primary v pupil does his work wholly in the 
presence of the teacher, the university student works most 
in his absence, hoping soon to discharge bim altogether. 
By teaching, then, we are to understand the immediate, 
direct, face-to-face Stimulus of one mind on another. 
The fact already announced, that in teaching the two 
minds move as one, requires personal contact. 

Hence the first step in operating the external machinery 
is to bring pupils and teacher together at a given time 
and place. The law of obedience to the requirement of 
time and place derives its authority from the fact that 
without this particular form of obedience the co-opera- 
tion of teacher and pupil is impossible. The law against 
absence and tardiness does not derive its validity from the 
school board or the legislature, but from the nature of 
teaching. Truancy is wrong because it renders impos- 
sible the oneness of mind between teacher and pupil 
necessary to Instruction. The pupil or the teacher who 
is wilfully tardy or abseilt, does that which, if done by 
all who have the same right, would completely destroy the 
school Organization, because it blocks the machinery at 
the working-point. And the same right is extended to all 
by the law breaker, from the fact that he assumes such 



THE LAW EVOLVING TUE ORGANISM. 71 

privilege. Thus the tax-payer and cliild are robbed by the 
mere fact of absence or tardiness. This requirement of 
time and place is sacred, and teacher and pupils should 
feel under the strictest Obligation» to keep it inviolate. 
There shonld be the most rigid adherence to exact time in 
opening and closing the day and its sessions. The ethical 
value of such obedience is to be discussed under the general 
heading of ethical value of school management. I speak 
here only of such obedience in relation to the organic unity 
of teacher and pupil in the act of instruction ; in relation, 
therefore, to the organic unity of the whole System. 

This law of personal contact determines the size of the 
class or school to be put in Charge of a single teacher. 
That individual needs may be satisfied, there must be 
opportunity for intimate personal acquaintance. The 
more helpless the Student, the smaller must be the classes 
and the school; although in practice this is usually re- 
versed, crowding more of smaller than of larger pupils in 
a given space. So much depends on general conditions, 
especially in the training and power of the Student, that 
no definite statement ean be made as to the proper 
number. A primary teacher does well to manage a class 
of ten or a school of twenty; while in the Upper grades 
management ought to be no more difKcult, so far as the 
number is concerned, with classes of twenty and a school 
of forty. When the conditions are definitely known, the 
principle whieh requires the (dosest personal influence and 
necessary individual assistance, is the sufficient guide in 
practice. 



72 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

This law of personal contact in teaching requires tlie 
scliool-room , with its appointraents as a niere dwelling- 
place. Tims there arises out of the preceding a second 
external condition of unity ; namely : — 

The Scliool-room. — Considered as a place of residence, 
the school-room must be made a positive influence in 
securing unity between teacher and pupil. It must be 
more than a secure, quiet, and comfortable meeting-place 
for teacher and pupil; it must liave a positively elevating 
influence, bringing the pupil, by its active toning power, 
into the higher life and mood of unity with the teacher. 
The pupil comes at once under the combined influence of 
the presence of the teacher and the more indefinable 
presence of the school-room. 

The school-room must be homelike and cheerful, 
pleasing and attractive. It should not be bare, hard, 
and repulsive, but filled with sunshine and delight. 
which makes it more attractive and cheering than the 
home of the average child. This does not require up- 
holstered furniture and elaborate decorations. Clean 
walls, with here and there a well-chosen picture, which 
can speak to the mind and heart of the child ; neat 
window-curtains ; a few flowers; some carpeting, — the 
more the better; and whatever little matters good taste 
would suggest. The tone of the school-room, aside from 
inducing the mood of mind favorable to unity of thought, 
is one of the powerful unconscious influences shaping the 
character of the child, and should receive as careful atten- 
tion as the multiplication table. Court-houses are often 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ÜRGANISM. 73 

quite expeusively carpeted, to be bespattered by coarse 
men whose formative period is passed; while school- 
houses have bare walls, floors, and platforms, to be occu- 
pied the whole day by pure, susceptible childliood. A 
more refming power in the sehool-room, and the court- 
room beconies the less useful. The court-house is not 
over done; the school-house is under done. The teacher 
must not wait for the trustee or director to do expensive 
things; with no expense, except the free contribution of 
pupils, in articles and in labor, the school-room can be 
made quite cheery. The will finds the way. 

The general relation of presence of teacher and pupil in 
a properly toned school-room must now assume dehnite : — 

Communicable Relation of Teacher and Pupils. — The 
immediate condition of unity is that which makes pos- 
sible the exchange of thought through speech, look, and 
gesture. Hence, securing communicable relation, to the 
end of unity in the act of Instruction, requires more than 
the mere presence of teacher and pupils in the school-room 
at a given time. Teacher and pupils must be brought face 
to face as in the act of communication. This requires 
pupils to be seated in a compact form, so that the teacher 
can seize the entire group in one view; and so that each 
pupil in the group is in easy conversational relation with 
the teacher. The seated portion of the room should not 
be so wide from right to left, or so long from front to 
back, that all the pupils cannot be equally distinctly 
addressed by eye and voice. If classes are to be heard in 
their seats, say in the left, middle, or right of the room, 



74 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

the width of the room from right to left would be in- 
creased by what it should be for convenience in grasping 
the school as a whole. In such, a case there shoiüd be a 
compromise between the two requirements. If the school 
is to be addressed always as a whole, as often the case in 
a high school, the seated portion should be about Square; 
if two grades are to be in the room, the seated portion 
should be about one third wider from right to left than 
from front to back. The auclience room of a modern 
church, with its settees circled about the pulpit as a 
centre, and elevated in the rear, is a recognition of the 
principle here to be enforced. 

It is not well to have the body of the school separated 
by stoves or wide aisles; the external form of unity 
should be maintained. The rows of desks should be 
placed with perfect regularity, and the whole should be 
made to look well as a body. When there are only a few 
pupils for the number of desks, these pupils should not 
be scattered so as to give the whole a ragged appearance. 
Compactness and external form of unity furthers the 
mental unity sought. It is wise foresight to visit the 
school-room before opening school, and make sure that 
the seating is in proper form. 

This law of seating so as to secure easy communicable 
relations, requires the teacher to keep himself in front of 
the pupils. He should not, for instance, go to the back 
of the room to aid a pupil; he should be where he can see 
and be seen, hear and be heard. Not that he may watch 
for mischief , but that he be always in convenient position 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 75 

for communication, — that he may constantly grasp the 
Avhole in unity, and avoid the school's falling to pieces 
by breaking the lines of unity between himself and each 
individual pupil. 

Teacher and pupil being now placed in definite position 
of unity with reference to each other, a further necessity 
arises, which must be met by adjustment of external con- 
ditions. The foregoing conditions confine and constrain 
both teacher and pupils, and consume energy which should 
be expended on the teaching and the learning act. Thus 
arises the third problem touching external conditions, 
that of : — 

Economy of Energy in Teacher and Pupils. — Teacher 
and pupils have but a given amount of energy for the 
work in band ; and the amount Avasted because of unfavor- 
able conditions incident to school-room confinement is so 
much subtracted from unity in the teaching process. The 
law of unity requires all the mental energy of the teacher 
and the pupil expended on the subject ander considera- 
tion. Therefore, the conditions must be such as not to 
divert a portion of their energy to something aside from 
the line of discussion. The school-room conditions neces- 
sarily divert some energy from the effort for which the 
school-room exists, just as a part of the force generated 
for a given purpose by a machine is destroyed by the 
machine itself. This friction must be reduced to the 
minimum ; and to do so the ways in which energy is 
wasted must be ascertained. Of these there can be but 
two: (1) uncomfortable bodily condition may divert the 



76 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

attention to seif ; or (2) attention may be diverted to some 
other object aside from tlie line of discussion. 

1. The physical condition of teacher and pupil must be 
such that they are not conscious of themselves ; or, better, 
such that their mental energy will be intensified by 
physical vigor. The conditions cannot supply red blood, 
or prompt the rhythmical pulse, but much can be done by 
way of conserving energy and securing comfort to the 
body while in the school-room. And for hiinself, while 
out of school, the teacher must guard his physical con- 
dition, and keep in good trim for the school-room. The 
law of the school forbids late hours and dissipation, and 
enjoins the utmost care in preserving the physical and 
mental vigor for the strain of teaching and managing. 
While in the school-room, the teacher must avoid undue 
exertion, — must sit when at all convenient, and avoid 
vexation and worry. The teacher should be relieved of 
the unjust bürden of reports usually imposed, and the 
work of teacher's meetings made as light as possible. 
The exaction of boards and superintendents in reports 
from teachers, by way of keeping the System well articu- 
lated, often tends strongly toward the dissolution of the 
organism altogether, in diverting the energy of the teacher 
from the vital point of the organism. 

Under the first point of economizing energy, the follow- 
ing specific conditions must be secured : — 

a. Seats should be so comfortable that the body is kept 
rested, — should be the shape of the body, and neither 
too high nor too low. Much is properly said on hygienic 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 77 

grounds against the high desk for small pupils ; but I wish 
here to eraphasize the fact that such is also detrimental 
to the act of Instruction. The old split puncheon seat 
witliout back was very uncornfortable, and thus very much 
opposed to mental unity of teacher and pupil. We find 
here also the grounds for intermissions and for frequent 
physica 1 . exercises. The pupil must be kept rested and 
invigorated, not only as a matter of preserving health, 
but of securing undivided attention. 

b. The air should be kept at the proper temperature. 
If a pupil is chilled, his attention is directed to himself ; 
and in a room of forty chilled pupils there are forty 
unities instead of one. It would be difficult to over- 
estimate the waste from inefficient heating apparatus. 
With a small stove in one corner of a large room on a 
cold day, unity is impossible, and the day wasted. The 
air must be kept at a uniform and a proper temperature 
all over the room, or the efficiency of the teaching act is 
impaired, — impaired just in that proportion in which the 
attention is directed to the seif. 

o. The effect of bad Ventilation on the mental activity 
is obvious. Drowsiness and depression weaken and divert 
mental energy, and prevent the füllest co-operation of 
thought in the line of discussion. Hence the teaching act, 
as well as health, requires a perfect System of Ventilation, 
and the care of the teacher as to the constant supply of 
pure air in the school-room. 

d. Since the process of unity is partly carried on 
through reading and writing, the lighting of the room 



78 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

must be such that no effort is required through the sense 
of siglit. Just in proportion as seeing becomes difficuH 
or painful, is the teaching act obstructed, as well as the 
eye injured. This means that there must be sufficient 
light, and from the proper direction. 

Thus all these points, — seating, heating, ventilating, 
and lighting, ■ — so properly urged as matters of health, 
are the conditions to receive attention in securing unity in 
the act of instruction; for bad seating, heating, ventilat- 
ing, and lighting make the body so uncomfortable that the 
pupil necessarily thinks of himself instead of the subjecfc 
being treated. These, and all other points in the external 
conditions which divert the attention from the topic under 
consideration to the seif, must receive careful attention; 
and this not only in a negative way, for these conditions 
should be made to stimulate the energy required in teach- 
ing and learning. To remove obstruction is not sufficient; 
the light, and the air, and the restful position must 
exhilarate the mind, and urge the unity which they nega- 
tively condition. 

2. If the attention is not diverted from the lesson to 
the seif, it may still be attracted to some other object 
aside from the line of thought. This may be occasioned 
through one of the senses, especially through touch, sight, 
or hearing; or by some preceding train of the thought in 
which the mind is absorbed. 

a. Because objects which the pupil or teacher may 
touch are apt to attract attention, all objects, other than 
those required in the immediate work, should be removed 



THE LAW EVOLVING TUE ORGANISM. 79 

from the desk. Let there be an apple, a ball, a knife, or 
a pen on the desk, and it seems almost impossible for the 
pupil to refrain from handling it; and thns having other 
th.ougb.ts awakened than those desired. The advantage 
of Single over double desks arises at this point. Every 
experienced teacher knows how much less is the strain to 
keep order with pupils seated single than when seated 
double, — so much less that it is wise economy for the 
trustee to buy tlie single desk at a much greater cost. 

b. Siuce attention is apt to be attracted througli the 
eye, all unnecessary movement about the room should be 
avoided, and all the objects in the room be orderly 
bestowed. Pupils passing in and out during school 
sessions; getting drink; coal hucket out of place; one 
curtain down and another up, etc., etc., — all confuse the 
attention through the eye. 

c. Most effective of all means of diverting the attention 
is that of noise. Silence must be the law of the school- 
room. The noise of whispering, studying, fixing fires, 
Walking, loud talk of teacher, etc., must be gotten rid of. 
It is iiuite common for the teacher to make more noise 
than all the pupils together. A teacher should speak in 
subdued tones, and more about fcoo quietly to attract 
notice. He should so address a class during recitation 
that the pupils studying are not compelled to listen. 
Pencils should be sharpened at recess; and slate frames 
covered, or slates abolished for note-books. 

I know it has been offen urged that a noisy school-room 
is a sign of energy and activity, of industry and hard 



80 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

work; tliat the working beehive must hum. This sounds 
veiy well tili we reflect that it is physical energy and 
activity that makes the noise; there is no mental analogy. 
Bather it is the reverse; for the greater the mental 
activity the greater the silence. The boy who thinks is 
not necessarily noisy, but necessarily silent. All profes- 
sional students seek a silent retreat as the best condition 
for mental labor. This doctrine of a noisy school arises 
from two classes of teachers, — those who cannot secure 
silence, and seek an escape through the theory ; and those 
who champion in good faith the plea for freedom on the 
part of the pupil, ■ — or, as it seems to some, a plea for 
license. 

d. Little can be said to free the mind from prepossess- 
ing moods and trains of thought. The opening exercises 
have a value at this point. Pupils gather in the school- 
room in the morning, bringing with them their diverse 
interests and thoughts born of their multifarions duties, 
amusements, ancl associations. The opening exercise 
draws their minds to a centre; the music brings them 
into a common mood; and the Scripture lesson recalls 
them from their ramblings, and tones the thought for the 
labor of the day. I believe that opening exercises are 
justified on the score of school management, as well as on 
account of religious culture. 

Having now brought teacher and pupils into the tonic 
atmosphere of the school-room, and having secured defi- 
nite communicable relations in face-to-face position ; and 
further, havinsr made the conditions such as not to divert 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 81 

energy from the seif to other objects, but rather such as 
to stiinulate energy in the direction desired, teacher and 
pupils must now be supplied with: — 

Instruments of School Work. — At first the school-house 
appears as a convenient , comf ortable, and homelike abode ; 
and second, with such added furniture and arrangement 
as necessary to bring teacher and pupils into detinite rela- 
tion for the interchange of thought. Certain appliances 
must yet be added to coraplete the outfit of every well- 
furnished school-house. These are blackboards, with 
accompanying instruments ; maps, Charts, and devices for 
illustrating subjects ; laboratories, library, and text-books. 

The blackboard is the constant means by which the 
teacher and pupils exchange thoughts through demonstra- 
tion, outline, and graphic illustration. Maps, Charts, 
and illustrative devices, as globes and mathematical 
forms, are the more perfect and fixed forms of com- 
munication; while the work on the blackboard, though 
more crude, is the more pliable and more immediate to 
the teacher's necessities. 

The laboratory differs from the foregoing in not being 
graphic and illustrative, but in providing for the manipu- 
lation of the actual material studied. It is a means for 
multiplying the powers of Observation ; both by way of 
supplying material for Observation, and also through 
instrumenta which multiply the powers of the senses ; 
with others which alter the conditions of the object to be 
observed. Laboratories are quite a conspicuous part of 
a College or university outfit; but high schools are just 

6 



82 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

beginning to realize their value, and to supply themselves 
accordingly. Their indispensable Service to gramrnar and 
primary grades is yet to be recognized. The teacher in 
the primary school who values truly the study of nature 
must feel hindered in a school without some chemical and 
physical appliances. The laboratory, or at least some 
means of experimental study, has not been called for 
more earnestly because the study of nature so far has 
been forced in the back-ground by the more conventional 
studies. When Observation and experimental studies 
assume their proper place in primary and elementary 
education, then the laboratory will be a prominent part 
of the common-school outfit. The child's education begins 
in the great laboratory of nature, and his studies should 
be continued unbroken, but in a more rigid and systematic 
way. He must be trained to observe more accurately and 
thoroughty, and by the use of instruments to persuade 
nature to reveal the mysteries which she will not volun- 
tarily disclose. 

The necessity of a library is better understood ; but in 
this, too, we find the same decreasing importance attached 
in descending to primary Instruction. It would be diffi- 
cult to state how largely a university in these days con- 
sists in a library. Class-room work is reduced to a 
minimum, students spending their time in the library 
investigating subjects under the direction of the teacher. 
As in the case of laboratories , high schools are beginning 
to understand the value and use of libraries, and the 
library is gradually taking its place in every well-regu- 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 83 

lated high school. When teachers in the lower grades 
understand the science and the art of teaching, and thus 
gain freedom from the conventional school drill for 
definite, ponderable products in the dogmatic form of 
text-books, the library will be as much demanded there 
as in the university. Of course the Organization of such 
a library and the use of the books will be different. For 
instance, multiple copies of the same book would be 
needed, so that the teacher could use it with the class as 
a whole. Instead of the regulation reader, the teacher 
who did not work by the page would be truly happy 
to have in the library copies enough of Hawthorne's 
" Tanglewood Tales " to supply his f ourth grade, and in 
a few weeks be able to Substitute Whittier's Poems, etc. 
The child in the primary grade has the right to a supply 
of the best juvenile literature. Are not nature, history, 
and mythological stories as necessary to the child's eulture 
as science, history, and philosophy are to the university 
Student? And if so, is it not the business of the school, 
as much in one case as in the other, to supply the neces- 
sary books? Forces are already moving strongly to the 
formation of libraries for primary and grammar grades. 
Never before was there so much stir about young people's 
literature, and through agencies at work many common 
schools now have a nucleus of a library. When the convic- 
tion comes that a library is an essential part of the outfit 
of every school, then the library will come as a matter of 
course, as does the school -house and blackboard. And 
when it does come, it will do more than all other agencies 



84 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

to infuse with fuller and richer life the hard pedantic 
drill of the school-master. 

With all that has been said against text-books, they are 
still essential instruments of school work. The library 
may supplant some, and render others less necessary, but 
its main effect on text-books will be that of forcing to 
their intelligent use. We cannot refuse all things which 
are abused. The abuse of the text by following it so 
slavishly as to make the pnpil feel that the form and 
compass of knowledge are bound therein, cannot be too 
strongly conclemned. But the text-book, used as a con- 
venient guide to the discussion, and re-enforced by wide 
reading in reference books, must ever remain an efficient 
means of Instruction. 

Unifying Qualtties and Conditions Secured. 

Efficient co-operation, involved in the process of Instruc- 
tion, requires a teacher having the qualities already named 
to face the pupils under the conditions specified. Such is 
the condition of Instruction demanded by the nature and 
need of the pupil. Yet this is not usually a conscious 
demand on his part. But his unconscious need gives law 
to the school with as much authority as though he advo- 
cate his own wants in logical form ; yet public sentiment 
must voice his needs for him. All that has been outlined 
must be in the thought of the public, and brought into 
reality by some agency beyond teacher and pupil. These 
of themselves could not secure effective conditions of 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 85 

(Kooperation. After the teacher is enthroned in the 
school-rooin, he cloes mucb to secure and maintain con- 
ditions of nnity; bat up to that point, and continnous 
with bis dnty, society must secure and maintain the 
teacher in his place under conditions of successful labor. 
Schools are not detaclied from society, but are constantly 
conditioned by the educational thought and sentiment of 
the public. If the school goes wrong, it must ultimately 
be charged to public intelligence and purpose; but not 
iminediately, for society realizes its thought and wish 
throngh executive agencies. What this thought and wish 
shonld be I have tried to deduce in the two preceding 
ohapters. After these conditions have been clearly denned 
in thought and purpose, it yet remains to realize them; 
therefore the next step in the evolution of the school is 
to secure executive agencies to Institute and maintain the 
school, giving rise to the problem of school swpervision. 

From the two factors in the school process, discussed 
in the two foregoing chapters, it is obvious that school 
supervision has two quite distinct phases, — one, that of 
supervising the conditions of Instruction; the other, that 
of supervising Instruction itself. The first is chiefly a 
business function, but it has also a professional aspect; 
for the conditions of instrnction must be interpreted in 
order to supply them intelligently. The second requires 
strictly expert, professional skill. While these two 
functions have usually been performed by a single person 
called Superintendent, city or county, it is hoped that, 
in due course of differentiation, there will arise soon 



86 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

distinct agencies for the distinct functions. But wliether 
these two functions be exercised by one, or locatSd in 
separate agents, tliey rnust be kept quite distinct in 
thought, both for clearness of discussion and efficiency 
of action. 

Supervision of Instrifction. — The ahn of supervision of 
Instruction is to secure the proper qualities in the teacher. 
The true teacher requires of hirnseif the qualities the 
pupil demands; but, until he is a true teacher, he has not 
the knowledge and the spirit to make such requirement. 
Considering the weakness of human nature, it would not 
be safe to trust those interested to decide for themselves 
the question of fitness for admission into the profession. 
There must be sorne one competent and trust worthy to 
voice the unconscious dernands of the child, and check, 
as would the child, the admission of the unworthy and 
incompetent. This becomes less necessary as the pupil 
approaches maturity; College and university students can 
largely be trusted to defend themselves. Under the 
elective System they starve out the indifferent teacher; 
yet protection here would be timely, in preventing the 
student's starvation along with that of bis teacher. 
Neither can the public, who create and support the school 
by a strong educational sentiment, specify the needs of 
the Student defmitely enough to guide in securing the 
proper qualities in the teacher. The general theories of 
the public are too crude and indiscriminating to specify 
exactly what is needed. Aud if this were not true, 
function must be located to be executed. 



THE LAW EVOLVING TUE ÜRGANISM. 87 

Tliis one, to stand for tlie pupil as over against tlie 
teacher, and to define and voice the intelligence of tlie 
public, nuist be selected out of tlie ranks of the teachers 
themselves; for there is required of liim the high- 
est degree of the same kind of qualiiications as that 
already described for the teacher. He must secure the 
qnalifications in the teacher required by the growing life 
of the pupil; and for this he needs the same sympathy for 
the pupil, and the same insight into Ins life, as required 
of the teacher. He has the function of the teacher raised 
to the second power. He teaches through the teacher; 
and from the fact that he can test and guide many 
teachers, his influence on the pupil is multiplied many. 
fold beyond that of direct Instruction. 

In the process of evolution the Superintendent' s function 
becomes entangled with business which does not belong to 
a teacher. But he is always properly classed as a teacher; 
and when evolution has done its perfect work, he will be 
restricted to the supervision of teachers. The fact that 
so large a number who are called superintendents devote 
themselves chiefly to the business and political interests 
of the school is incidental to the Situation; and no indica- 
tion that such is the normal and final condition of things. 
The business side of the school must receive atttention; 
and since the Superintendent is not always fully differ- 
entiated^in his preparation, he devotes himself to the 
business phase of school work, it being more tangible and 
less rigid in its requiremeuts. At present the Super- 
intendent has combined in him both functions, giving 



88 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

most emphasis, perhaps, to business, — such as looking 
after supplies, or inspecting attendance and promotion 
records — the business-educational part of the prograin. 
Since there inust be a business man, those who bave more 
taste and skill for the external affairs of the school should 
be restricted to that department of work, leaving to those 
who have the more highly specialized professional skill 
the work of supervising Instruction. 

Such differentiation is rapidly going on, and in many 
schools, although not yet legally recognized, it has virtu- 
ally taken place. Superintendents, overburdened with 
business affairs, or feeling unsafe in assuming to direct 
scientific Instruction, are securing Supervisors of primary 
work and of special subjects, and also the aid of an 
assistant Superintendent who exercises general super- 
vision over Instruction. While law can do but little to 
hasten any form of social progress tili that progress 
becomes largely an accomplished fact there is a stage in 
the process when legal recognition gives instant relief to 
the struggling forces. This relief has been feit in the 
school of Cleveland, Ohio, which recently took the final 
step, the Superintendent receiving the legal title, Super- 
intendent of Instruction, the business management being 
intrusted to a Director. These receive equal salaries, 
and have absolute power in their respective functions, the 
Superintendent being appointed for life, or during good 
behavior. 

It seems reckless to give a Superintendent absolute 
power. Without a check, is there no danger of his 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 89 

becoming autocratic, and defiantly independent? The 
System , however, instead of being autocratic, is strictly 
democratic. Every child, parent, aud educational interest 

stands in direct touch with the Superintendent. He must 
sliape liis conduct froni tlie Standpoint of the child, as 
reflected, it niay be, through the parent; he must justify 
his theory and his practice before the highest court of 
public appeal, — the people themselves. A Superintendent 
who serves a board niay, knowing its personal niake-up, 
ingeniöusly fasten himself on the systern in niany ways 
other than by efficient Service ; but when he comes before 
the educational public, he must address himself to the 
business in band. 

The unlimited Superintendent, with man 's natural love 
of power, might become intoxicated if it were not for the 
sobering fact of fearful responsibility. It would seem 
that such a position would be eagerly sought; but indeed, 
he is a bohl man who makes the venture, liesponsibility 
is always commensurate with liberty and opportun it}*; 
and fear naturally arises with the thought of absolute 
autliority, which has to be justified by him who enjoys 
tlie autliority. If the child has a poor teacher, the child, 
parent, and public can say, "You did it." When the 
tenure of office is conditioned on good behavior, counled 
with personal responsibility, the Situation is such as to 
put the Superintendent on good behavior, because he must 
always face his own deed. If his deed justines his oppor- 
tunity, life is too short for such Service; if not, he makes 
his own cause for removal. 



90 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

While the Situation requires all tlie pluck and self- 
assurance a Superintendent can muster, he will still have 
a large balance of joy in tlie opportunity of realizing 
clierished ideals. When ideals disturb, there is no elation 
of life so great as tliat arising from opportunity to realize 
theni; and the ecstasy which accompanies the labor is the 
sustaining power and sufficient reward of tlie laborer. A 
Superintendent wbo does not feel deeply the bürden of 
responsibility, does not compreliend tlie requirements of 
bis vocation, and is not qualified for tlie duties before 
bim. But if tlie liesitancy thus produced is not overcome 
by conndence founded in a firm conception of the educa- 
tive process, and by the hope of realizing his educational 
ideals through the opportunity offered, still more should 
we suspect some fundamental defect in his professional 
character. 

The first step in securing the proper teaching qualities 
is that of : — 

Selecting the Teacher. — This , aside from the act of 
teaching, is the most critical function of the organism. 
The one held responsible for this duty must know, in a 
scientific and professional way, the necessary qualifica- 
tions of a teacher ; and besides, must have that devotion to 
the pupil which makes him firm against the importunities 
of the unqualified, whether they be relatives, friends, or 
home or foreign talent. There is but one law, and this 
requires that the best available teacher be secured, eise 
the Superintendent robs the tax-payer, and murders the 
child. Under the most favorable conditions, the supply 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 91 

of well-prepared teachers is always much too sinall; and 
to further limit by irrelevant bases of choice is an out- 
rage on the pupil and the public. The greatest ethical 
strain of the System occurs at this point, and the appoint- 
ing power must be located in a Superintendent of rigid 
integrity and uncompromising educational convictions. 

Of all the functions strictly belonging to the Superin- 
tendent, that of selecting teachers is yet prominently 
shared by the board, just as the business of the board is 
shared by the Superintendent. However, the long con- 
tention of the Superintendent with the board for his 
professional rights has left with the board, generally, 
only the privilege of formal approval of the superin- 
tendent's actions. This satisfies the board, as they may 
still claim the power: while the Superintendent is com- 
fortably screened behind the board assuming his action. 
The Superintendent may desire the evolution to go no 
further; but this would be to permit him to escape still 
the responsibility which the nature of the organism 
requires. He must exercise the appointing power un- 
disguised, if he expects opportunity for the highest pro- 
fessional effort. 

The first test of a Superintendent, city or county, or of 
a president of a College or university, lies in the kind of 
teacher put in and kept in the school. Nowhere can he 
show better, or worse, judgment ; and nowhere eise rnore, 
or less, of eamest educational conviction and downright 
honesty of purpose. Of course the embarrassment is 
great ; for always the supply of teachers, of the kind 



92 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

demancled, falls far short of tlie demand. Hence the 
earnest plea for professional schools. Such schools are 
doubly grounded : first. in the necessity for the individual 
to prepare himself for the profession; and second, in 
the necessity of the Superintendent in securiug trained 
teachers. These complementary forces are yet to work 
together more effectively in establishing more numerous 
and more efficient schools for elevating the professional 
status of the teacher. The purpose of such schools being 
to train teachers, the discussion under the "Unifying 
Qualities in the Teacher " suggests the general character 
and scope of their work. At tliis point we are interested 
only in their organic place in the System. 

After the Superintendent has made the best possible 
selection under the limitations, he will have to exercise 
still another function, that of : — 

Aiding the Teacher. — While the function of helping 
the teacher belongs to the Superintendent, this fact ought 
not to encourage the policy of employing cheap teachers 
and a high-priced Superintendent, expecting him to reach 
the pupil through inferior iustruments. Since the most 
efficient Superintendent may exhaust his efforts through 
the most skilful teachers which can be secured, the fore- 
going policy necessarily lowers the Standard of school 
work. 

If direct and immediate help to inefficient teachers could 
be eliminated, the Superintendent still has the problem 
of the continued growth of those teachers who were very 
desirable at the time of selection. An ideal teacher is 



THE LAW EVOLVING TUE ORGANISM. 93 

not one who has reached perfeotion, but one at the upper 
limit of the profession pusliing vigorously for better 
things. Such a one is most dissatisfied with present 
attainments, and presses most eagerly for assistance. At 
any rate, with all grades of teachers the superintendent's 
best service is not in direct Suggestion, but in general 
guidance and Stimulus to higher professional life. There 
must be constant unsettling through the revelation of 
higher ideals and more scientific processes. The teacher's 
work will improve only under rational insight into educa- 
tive processes, and not by direct advice and authority of 
the Superintendent. Teachers are too prone to seek what 
a Superintendent desires, in order that they may conform 
to his wishes. TMs may arise from lack of definite con- 
oeption of the work in band, or from a desire to stand 
well with authority. And superintendents understand 
too well how to manipulate this weakuess. Tlie obedience 
whieh the Superintendent should cultivate in the teacher 
is fchat of obedience to the reason in the educative process. 
The Superintendent should completely obscure himself as 
authority, but become conspicuous as a leader of thought. 
As the pupil looks to the teacher for the higher life of 
culture, so should the teacher look to the Superintendent 
for the higher life of the profession. The unity between 
the teacher and the Superintendent should be as organie 
and sympathetic as that between the pupil and the 
teacher. 

But it must not be inferred that a Superintendent is 
superior to. the teacher; his knowledge and skill are 



94 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

different in kind, but not necessarily in degree. A Super- 
intendent may serve wisely teachers who excel him in the 
details of their work ; in f act, they should be expected to 
so excel him. Surely, in the ideal condition of things, 
there will be as ninch general culture and professional 
knowledge and skill in the teacher of a grade, as in a 
Superintendent ; but the special preparation will be dif- 
ferent. The preparation of a College president is different 
from that of a member of his faculty; but this does not 
require on his part a higher degree of culture or profes- 
sional attainment. The unjust discrepancy between the 
pay of a Superintendent and the grade teacher, and that 
between a president and member of his faculty, cannot be 
justified wholly by the difference in the qualifications 
required; the great advantage given to one must be partly 
accounted for by the mere accident of occupying a cou- 
spicuous and authoritative position. This accident, too, 
often persuades the mediocre Superintendent to assume an 
unbecoming superiority. Under this delusion he moves 
about with an air of omniscience, making wise, common- 
place remarks ; and negative, cutting, personal criticisms. 
In the intervals he looks after the condition of blackboards 
and school-rooms, and inspects records and programs, and 
does whatever easy work he can pick up to keep himself 
busy. His professional criticisms suggest surcharged 
wisdom, but only wound and embarrass those he should 
help. All of this is a violation of the law of unity, 
which forbids the Superintendent to stand over against the 
teacher, but which requires the closest sympathetic co- 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 95 

Operation between them. As the teacher operates by fusion 
with the pupil's life, so the Superintendent must become one 
with the teacher, and through the teacher with the pupil. 
The superintendent's function is to bring the teacher into 
unity with the pupil; and this, since the teacher must 
become one with the pupil, he cannot do except by unity 
with the teacher. To supervise Instruction is to find the 
way through the teacher to the pupil. It must be as if 
the Superintendent taught the pupil himself, having the 
practical skill of the teacher added to bis broader concep- 
tions of theory. Whatever higher conceptions he may 
have of the life-giving functions of the subjects to be 
taught must, through Ins agency, come into the life of the 
pupil. While the Superintendent teaches at long ränge 
and through multiplied instrumentalities, he must touch 
the life of each individual pupil. It is too common to 
find a Superintendent with good theories of the process of 
Instruction in a given subject while none of the better 
things are seen bearing their fruit. A Superintendent is 
not a Superintendent unless Ins best conceptions of educa- 
tive processes find their way through the teacher into the 
life of the pupil. This does not niean that the teacher is 
to become a mere instrument of transmission, but must 
yet remain a potent personal originating force. Here, 
as before suggested, the Superintendent can do härm by 
pushing bis theories onto the teacher more rapidly than 
they can be organized into an originating force of the 
teacher's own. While the teacher is the superintendent's 
leverage of reaching the mass of pupils, and of doing 



96 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

more effectively the direct work than. he liimself could do, 
tliis instrument must be taken in no mechanical sense; 
but as an original throbbing life, charged with its own 
message to the ptipil. Ultimately, wliat the Superin- 
tendent is held for is the kind of work the ptipil is re- 
ceiving, — not bis elaborate reports and pnblished theories. 
The test is, whether bis own best thought of teaching 
reaches the pupil through the teacher as if the teacher 
liimself originated it. He must make the teacher the 
active force and applier of bis own best edücational 
conceptions. 

Thus the same law of unity between teacher and pupil 
holds for the Superintendent. But with bim it is muck 
more difficult to fulfil ; for many more instrumentali- 
ties intervene between bim and tbe pupil. Not only 
the teacher, but also the material conditions of the 
teacher's labor, and often the political machinery of the 
school, intercept his movement toward the pupil. One of 
the great problems of edücational reform is that of con- 
serving supervising energy This consists first in remov- 
ing the temptation for the Superintendent to spend his 
days and nights in securing the election of members of 
the school board who will serve his personal ends, and 
after election to redouble bis diligence to manage them 
instead of the school. The next step is that of relegating 
to business men and Clerks tbe business and routine side 
of school work, so that the Superintendent must justify 
liimself by his own special work, rather than by a multi- 
tude of indefinite duties cleverly performed. And lastly, 



THE LAW KVOLVING TUE ORGAXISM. 97 

fchere must be selected a Superintendent with a clearly 
defined educational character, rather than a man of hetero- 
geneous and conflicting eleinents required in dealing with 
the concrete situations of business and politics, while 
managing the educational interests of the school. Thns 
might we hope to find more uniformly inen of commanding 
eminenee Alling the school position, of all others must 
potent for good, because widest and most searching in its 
influence. 

Supervising Conditions of Instruction. — While the 
business agent is supposed to be skilled in providing 
the necessary conditions, the teacher and Superintendent 
must specify them; for one who does not know the educa- 
fcive process cannot specify the conditions of that process. 
Tims the business agency of the school, which selects and 
authorizes the teacher and Superintendent, in turn becomes 
Bubject to the direction and authority of that teacher and 
Superintendent. Through the organic relation of condi- 
tions to the teaching act, the teacher must keep before the 
board the conditions next most needed, that school funds 
may be most effectively distributed. Boards waste much 
in buying and contracting at random, and under the per- 
Buasion of interested agents. A board acts ill-advisedly 
in buying six tellurian globes, when a dictionary has not 
been supplied. The question is not what is a good thing 
für a school, but what is now most needed. Only the 
teacher and the Superintendent can be expected to know 
tliis; and it is their duty, tlirough a knowledge of the 
conditions as organized and working to the teaching act, 



98 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

to keep before the proper authorities the most effective 
ways of expenditure. 

But while the teaclier knows what is needed, he cannot 
be expected to procure it. He should know the appoint- 
ments of a school-house, and that it should be kept in a 
cleanly and orderly condition; but he cannot be expected 
to act as janitor or architect, or to enter into business 
relations with them. At this point arises the need of 
special business knowledge and skilL and calls for a new 
organ in the System. 

The differentiation of this function and that of Super- 
intendent has already been discussed. The business side 
of the school process, as well as that of the supervision 
of mstruction, is one of the professional aspects of school 
work, and should be dignified by a salaried official. . What 
has been said touching the opportunity and responsibility 
of a differentiated Superintendent, holds with as much 
force for a differentiated school director. If money is 
wasted or a contract fraudulently filled, the responsible 
source can be directly located. A man whose profession 
is to supply conditions of school work is apt to use all 
diligence in keeping his trust; but if he serve incidentally, 
as a Citizen with other Citizens, interest and responsibility 
are at lowest tension. 

In this and the previous discussion of the differentiation 
of the supervising forces, and the separate location of 
functions in Superintendent and director, I have not, of 
course, described the actual conditions of things, but only 
the ideal order of evolution, which is already indicated 



THE LAW EVOLVING THE ORGANISM. 99 

in advancing types of the systein. Only by speaking to 
the ideal can the discussion be practical. The principle 
of guidance for the director of a country school, the town- 
ship trustee , or the school board of a village or city must 
be found in their ideal relations to the teaching process, 
which requires the distinct embodiraent in a specialized 
officer. Whether things are so or can now be made so, 
is not the question; but what is the ideal requireraent of 
the law of the school, so that the duty may be clearly 
discerned, and as fully performed as entangling relations 
permit. If the genesis of the organism under the law 
moves inevitably to the differentiation of the snpervising 
function into that of Superintendent and director, we have 
the most significant fact for the immediate guidance of 
all school ofticers, and for giving future trend to the 
organism. 1 

Basis and Limitations of Supervision. — Public opinion 
is both the basis and limitation of supervision. The 
director, appointing the Superintendent by the approval 
of a board who represent the people, is the immediate 
connecting link between the school and public sentiment. 
15ut when appointed, the Superintendent shares the medi- 
ating function between the school in its concrete reality 
and public opinion. These special executive agents serve 

1 Since completing this discussion, the Report of the Committee of Fif- 
teen has appeared, containing a sub-report on " The Organization of City 
School Systems." This sub-report is a more eomprehensive Statement 
aud a strouger enforeement of the ideal here presented than I have been 
able to make. 



100 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

linder the legislative action, whicli emanates from society 
as a whole. While insisting tliat executive function rnust 
be centralized in a Single officer, it is also recognized that- 
a widespread and intelligent school sentiment, from 
which raay come wise school legislation, is, after all, 
the real basis of the school. The more people who take 
an active interest in school the better. Diffusion of 
educational sentiment is as necessary as definite location 
of executive function. Wide diversity of intelligent con- 
viction, focused in unity of action, is the only means to 
certain, permanent, and valuable results. 

The executive officers, being limited by the conditions 
imposed by the public, cannot be held responsible beyond 
the limits of opportunity furnished. Aside from lack of 
general encouragement and recognition of worthy Service, 
the limitations are of two specific kinds. Society may 
fail to supply a sufficient number of competent teachers, 
and thus f orce the Superintendent to choose inferior ones ; 
or fail to supply funds sufficient to secure the best talent 
when found, or to furnish the proper conditions for effec- 
tive service. The Superintendent is doubly limited over 
the business agent; for he cannot find so easily what he 
wants, or secure it when found. Besides, it is much 
easier, it seems, to secure funds to supply the material 
conditions of the school than to secure the best profes- 
sional service. The former is more tangible and con- 
spicuous. A teacher is supposed to be a teacher, and 
that is the end of the matter. The distinctions in finer 
qualities, whicli are vital to the pupil, are not patent to 



SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 101 

the public gaze, or discernible by tlio unskilled eye. The 
old wooden school-house can easily be replaced with a 
brick strueture, with turret and bell; while tlie wooden 
teacher remains undisturbed. Public sentiment must be 
educated, if not into a clear discernment of professional 
qualifications , into a faith that tliere is all the difference 
in the world between a scientific teacher working under 
proper conditions and just anybody teaching under any 
conditions. Schools are not good just in proportion to the 
money expended on them, — not at all; but the wisest 
supervision cannot make a good school without ample 
Provision of funds, nor unless society furnishes a sufficient 
nuniber of well-trained teachers. Public sentiment must 
be so quickened that it will not tolerate poor schools, 
and at the same time be made to feel responsible for the 
conditions which may produce good ones. The school 
cannot progress out of touch with the life that Supports 
it. Ultimately, what is good in the school must be 
accredited to society; and there, too, must rest the blame 
for its shortcoinings. 

And now we can retreat no further. If the Student is 
not realizing himself daily, we look at once to the teacher, 
primarily; and then to the conditions under which he 
labors. Having located the evil in one or the other of 
these, we then turn to hold the proper supervising agency 
responsible. He must correct the evil, or show that the 
conditions imposed on him by the public make the remedy 
impossible. If the latter, nothing is left but to educate 
public sentiment and wait for the course of time to bring 



102 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

the remedy. In this it appears the duty of every educa- 
tional man to be diligent in moulding educational senti- 
ment, and in giving trend to educational thought. His 
professional duty is not circumscribed to the school-room 
or the office ; he niust face about and voice to the public 
their own latent ideas and purposes, and crystallize their 
convictions into active educational forces. 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 



While the organism extends out to the limit of the 
school consciousness, and includes the whole of society, 
the focal centre of the organism is in the unity of teacher 
and pupil; and the work of the organism is executed in 
this active unity, for which we have been preparing. 
The teacher, with qualifications as befo're enumerated, 
now confronts pupils under the conditions as before speci- 
fied; and the school which existed only in the thought 
and purpose of society becomes a concrete, living, moving 
reality. 

The school is now in the active process of realizing the 
instraction for which it was organized; but in the process 
it secures an end not in the idea which gave birth to the 
organism. While the school, as does a machine, consumes 
much of the energy which it is supposed to apply, yet it 
makes good the loss in being an educative force in and of 
itself. In this case the instrument is not something 
apart from the material on which it operates. The pupil 
to be taught is a part of the instrument by which he is 
taught; the institutional life is his own life, and he is 
necessarily trained into certain forms, habits, and prin- 



104 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

ciples of ethical conduct. While the scliool is primarily 
organized to give Instruction in all that pertains to human 
life and human weli'are, including morals, it happens that 
the power of the school in ethical training, inherent in 
the organism itself, more than compensates for the friction 
of the organism; and this must be taken into the account 
when estimating educative forces. 

The organism, then, in executing the law, does so by 
serving as a means of Instruction; and, while doing so, 
it trains the pupil in rational self-control and in the spirit 
and forms of institutional life. While ethical teaching 
belongs to the regulär course of Instruction , and not to the 
subject of school management, the ethical training which 
comes from efficient school management must be given due 
prominence. Both results — Instruction and ethical train- 
ing — are secured in the same process; and the manage- 
ment which is best for one is most efficient for the other. 
While for clearness of discussion they must be treated 
separately, and, therefore, one before the other, the 
co-existence of the two processes must not be forgotten. 
Since Instruction is the initiative force and the basis of 
the movement, it is proper to consicler first the organism 
as executing the law through Instruction. 

The Organism in tue Process of Instruction. 

In this process the teacher moves in unity with the 
school as a whole, or in sub-unity with parts; as, with 
class study ing or reciting. 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 105 

Unity in School as a Whole. — Many things the 
school. as a whole, join in doing, — such as devotional 
Bxercises, gyrnnastics, passing in and out of school-room, 
etc. In all such the pupils should be required to act and 
tliink as one. In all general exercises too rauch care 
cannot be taken to have, at the outset, the attitude of 
attention; everything eise nmst be put aside. The desks 
should be cleared of needless books and articles, and the 
whole room assume the appearance of unity. When an 
announcement is to be made, or a direction is to be given, 
the teacher should not utter a word of it tili sure that 
every one is attentive. The combined movement of 
putting books in desks, in turning, standing, marching 
in and out of the room, is conducive to both Order and 
discipline, as well as being a great economy of time. 

But caution is here needed. Machinery should not be 
introduced for its own sake; it is always an inner unity 
that is desired, and formality is destructive of this. The 
euter form must be a necessity of the inner spirit. The 
teacher must rationally decide, having all the circum- 
stances and conditions of the particular school at band, 
just what mechanical combinations result from the inner 
necessity. The teacher cannot take this from imitation, 
or from any statement that might be made; for special 
conditions would give a new form to the law of unity. 
A country school with all grades must be managed differ- 
ently from a room of two grades in a city school, or from 
a high school or College. All that is needed is the prin- 
ciple, and common-sense. 



106 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

But while warning the teacher against machinery for 
its own sake, danger also lies in the other direction, — 
too little attention to the military side of the school. It 
is sometimes urged that putting away books, moving in 
and out, etc., by signals, interferes with the pupil's 
inclividuality. We ought to think twice before being 
alarmed at this. This so-called individuality is just 
what needs break ing into. The child will be a niember 
of society ai'ter a while, and then will have to fall into 
line, and march to the music of the social order. Gaprice 
and wilfulness cannot be interfered with too much; and 
the requirements of strict combination take Square issue 
with these. The child lacks the power of self-control, 
and cannot bring hiniself into harmony with others. This 
of itself would be ground for the most rigid requirement 
of unity, to say nothing of facilitating school work and 
making Instruction effective. But this anticipates the 
ethical value of school management. 

It must not be supposed that when a teacher passes to 
class work, he leaves the school as a whole; in dealing 
with the class he must not drop out of sight the whole of 
which the class is a part. Securing unity in the school 
as a whole is a continuous process, and requires constant 
tension in the teacher. Hence the teacher needs to be 
well reinforced by that element of professional spirit 
called sensitiveness to unity in the organism. All the 
conditions enumerated may be perfect, but they will go 
for naught unless the teacher who Stands before that 
school has the sense and habit of organic unity in thought. 



THE OKGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 107 

He must constantly grasp the school into unity as the 
work proceeds; and this requires, as already discussed, 
a power of a dehnite kind, — the power to hold all the 
details of the process without losing sight of the main 
issue. The teacher must have a potent ideal of unity, — 
an ideal which really Orders everything into an harmoni- 
ous System. Unless this be true, the school goes loose 
all through, and the teacher, while he may feel vaguely 
that something is wrong, cannot discern definitely what 
it is. With this feeling of unity there must be the 
power to grasp the classes and the individuals as parts 
into the unity of the whole. The curtain must be 
adjusted, the room ventilated, the temperature regulated, 
the pupil answered, the recitation heard, and with these 
the whole school move forward in the mind of the 
teacher. 

And now, in the presence of the pupils, the teacher 
must not only think and feel the school as a unit, but 
must draw the pupils into unity with himself by the 
power of sympathy. The teacher may grasp intellectually 
the school as one; and yet, in doing so, may hold pupils 
off at arm's length. Be it remembered that the unity 
desired is that between mind of teacher and pupil; and 
this can be secured only when the teacher's sympathy 
reaches out and draws the pupil to himself. The wannth 
of the teacher's life must be feit by the pupil; there must 
be no cold atmosphere between them. The teacher's heart 
must yearn for the pupil's highest good. If the teacher 
is really interested in the lives of Ins pupils, — all aglow 



108 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

with sympathy in their struggles, — they, by the law of 
sympathy, will be quickened into new life by the vital 
touch of mincl with mind. This is the unity sought, and 
can never be realized by any except by the sincere and 
true-hearted teacher. 

And thus, as the teacher moves forward from moment 
to moment, and from hour to hour, with the complex 
organism, and with multifarious duties, he must have at 
all times an abiding consciousness of the unity of the 
whole, and be in constant, rigid exercise of unifying 
power. 

The pupils before the teacher, and who are now to join 
with him, have, throngh difference in age and training, 
quite diverse abilities. All these must join with the 
teacher in the act of Instruction; yet the difference in 
ability may be so great that all cannot join in the same 
act, thus requiring the teacher to perform different acts in 
adaptation to different classes of pupils. This introduces 
the most distressing problem, especially in the country 
schools, with which the teacher and Superintendent have 
to deal, — namely, that of Classification and gradation, 
which, together, constitute, in the restricted sense, school 
Organization. Hence there must be, preparatory to the 
actual teaching, and continuous with it, the: — 



Organization of the School. 

Organization has, primarily, reference to the relation 
of pupils to teacher, and not to the relation of pupils to 



SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 109 

each other; the resulting secondary arrangements among 
pupils is of little or 110 consequence. This, like grasping 
the school as a whole while conducting the recitation, is 
a process continuous with Instruction. A school organ- 
organized does not remain so, but from day to day needs 
constant re-adjustment. The yearly paroxysms of ex- 
amiiiations and promotions do not indicate the contin- 
uous and healthful re-adjustment required hy the law of 
unity. 

A school is organized when pupils are classed and 
graded, and when the movement of the whole is 
programmed. 

Classification. — All pupils who join with the teacher 
in the same act at the same time form a class; when this 
class is thought of as joining with the teacher in a series 
of acts in the development of a suhject, it is called a 
grade. Tlius a grade and a class are one and the same 
thing, differing only in the view taken; in the class the 
learning acts are viewed as simultaneous, while in the 
grade, learning acts are viewed as successive. The same 
group of pupils, viewed in the two relations, forms both 
the class and the grade. 

A class is the result of an Organization, and not itself 
an Organization. Organization is the co-operative rela- 
tion between teacher and pupil. Several pupils may 
co-operate — be organized — with the teacher at the same 
time. These, having the same attributes of co-operating, 
form a class, — just as birds having the same attribute, 
blue, form a class, blue birds. Class unity is thus inci- 



110 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

dental, and of no direct educational Service further than 
that of indicating tlie organic unity between teacher and 
pupil. The latter is primary and must be secured, at 
whatever cost to external uniformity in Classification. 
The ignoiing of this distinction, and forcing external class 
unity, is the source of all the evils of the class System. 
Organic unity may prevent the uniform constituency of a 
class as the teacher changes from one subject to another. 
A pupil is a member of a class by virtue of his unity with 
the teacher; his connection with the particular members 
of the class is a matter of indifference. The first is vital; 
the second formal. 

Therefore such pupils as can join with the teacher in 
a given line of thought should constitute a class. These 
are determined not only by the qualifications of the 
pupils, but by the number the teacher can grasp in the 
process of Instruction. The teacher has come to instruct 
more than one at a time under the force of economy, and 
not under the command of an educational principle. 
Whatever gain there may be in class association, this is 
not taken as a determining principle of instructing many 
at once. Certainly the overcrowded condition of classes 
can only be explained on financial grounds, as illustrated 
by the difference between the size of classes in an endowed 
university and in a private school supported by the tuition 
of studeuts. 

The difficulty of instructing by classes, both because of 
number and inequality of pupils, and by further reason 
of the abuse of the class System, has caused a reaction in 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 111 

favor of the old plan of individual Instruction, — as, for 
instance, in l'ueblo, Col., where tlie pendulum has made 
its complete rebound. Individual Instruction is tlie 
newest current topic touching the question of Classifica- 
tion. The assumption is that Classification necessarily 
opposes efficient Instruction. Since no two pupils are 
exactly alike in knowledge and power, when the teacher 
adjusts Ins mind to one it is not exactly acljusted to the 
Other. Hence perfect Organization seein s to destroy the 
class altogether; but this is only a seeming. 

The practicability of individual Instruction is question- 
able, and closer analysis makes it appear undesirable. 
The reaction against class Instruction comes largely from 
the abuse of the System, and not from objections inherent 
in the System itself. When Classification and gradation 
were new features of the school System, naturally they 
were exalted into ends to which the pupil was means. 
Mechanical System compressed the free life of the pupil, 
and Classification was censured for the sins of uniformity. 
The abuse of the System must not condemn it, and 
its inherent difficulties may be offset by its inherent 
advantages. 

The assumption that class Instruction is not individual 
Instruction insinuates itself through the Opposition of 
terms, — class and individual. All Instruction must be 
individual Instruction. To teach a class is to teach the 
individuals composing it, and not sonie substituted abstrac- 
tion. It is possible to form a class so that the needs of 
each member may be as fully met as if each had his own 



112 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

teacher. Quite a wide ränge of ability, especially in 
upper classes, is consistent with individual Instruction 
in classes. Absolute uniformity is necessary only for 
tliose teacliers who force pupils to square-inch text-book 
results; but tbe teacher wbo puts flexible and liviug 
problems to tlie class may engage strong pupils to their 
utraost capacity, while the weakest work to advantage. 
In a town school of five hundred pupils, a class, as large 
as any class should be, can be formed of pupils so nearly 
equal in ability that the teacher who properly assigns 
work will experience no inconvenience in teaching them; 
but rather will feel reinforced by the enlarged complex 
life and spirit of the class. 

The Pueblo plan, as described in the "Educational 
Beview," February, 1894, while challenging discus- 
sion in its details, and in the principle assumed, sounds 
the true keynote of Organization in the following para- 
graph : — 

"The fundamental characteristic of the plan on which 
the schools are organized is its conservation of the indi- 
vidual. The pupil is placed purely with reference to 
where he can get the most good for himself ; he works as 
an individual, progresses as an individual, is promoted as 
an individual, and is graduated as an individual. The 
ordinary nomenclature of schools is continued for con- 
venience; but the school System is one of flexibility, per- 
mitting pupils to pass from working-section to working- 
section as may be expedient. The perplexities relative 
to class intervals have disappeared, because there is no 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 113 

mechanical Classification. In appellation the term junior 
pi senior may be used; but such term does not locate tlie 
individual any more than the name of a division of a 
railroad locates the exact position of a particular train. 
j?or working purposes the pupils are grouped in working- 
sections; but the members of a working-section are not 
necessarily doing the same work, or rather they are not 
doing the same work simultaneously. In brief, the school 
is both graded and ungraded, — graded in so far as applies 
to its plan of work, but ungraded in its accommodation of 
the individual." 

This is new and refreshing in contrast with the stifling 
System of mechanical uniformity. Yet let it be noted that 
tliis cannot be a rüde jostling and misplacing of the old. 
The new is generally, if not always, a return to that 
which is older than the old with which it is in conflict. 
Since there is nothing new und er the sun, the new is 
really the old. The "Pueblo plan" is both new and old: 
it is new in being a protest and a reaction against the 
abuses of the graded System; it is old in that the plan is 
one of individual Instruction. Some thirty years ago the 
"'Possum Kingdom School" was taught on the Pueblo 
plan, — pupils without Classification receiving individual 
aid. I speak of no fictitious school, but one named, in 
those days innocent of methods and terminologies, not 
after its characteristic mode of Instruction, but after the 
characteristic animal of the dense forest in which the 
school was located. If the teacher of that school should 
chance upon the Pueblo plan, he would exclaim: "What 



114 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

have you teachers been about all these years? Haven't 
you known all tlie time that you must teach the pupil, — 
the individual pupil? Sorry, indeed, that I did not 
write up the 'Possuni Kingdoni plan thirty years ago, 
and hasten the arrival of the great doctrine of individual 
Instruction. 

From the individual plan, through gradation and Classi- 
fication, back to the individual plan, — from 'Possum 
Kingdom to Fueblo, — what does it mean? Certainly it 
means a check on the abuses of the graded System; and 
it ought to mean much more; namely, that class Instruc- 
tion, with all of its merits, is harmonized with the needs 
of each individual in the class. It shonld mean class 
Instruction and individual Instruction at the same time. 
The Fueblo plan must not be too literally a return to the 
'Fossum Kingdom plan; but must bring a contribution 
from years of experience with the graded System. Pupils 
may be taught in classes without interfering with the 
rights of the individual; and thus, indeed, really further 
the interests of the individual more than can be done by 
individual Instruction. So that, while we protest against 
the abuses of arbitrary gradation and Classification, we 
must be careful to add what is good in it to the old plan 
of individual Instruction. The new must return to the 
old with increase, for "through the ages one increasing 
purpose runs," and the old must be "widened with the 
process of the suns." 

Gradation. — While Classification requires unity of each 
individual in the class with the teacher at a given 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 115 

moment in the act of teaching, gradatiou requires unity 
of each individual with the teacher in suecessive moments 
through the course of Instruction. The first is a simul- 
taneous unity; the second a suecessive one. The same 
pupil that joins with the teacher at a given moment may 
be unable to do so in suecessive moments; because pupils 
relatively vary in ability in different subjeets, and from 
time to time in the same subjeet. Gradation thus con- 
flicts with permanence and uniformity of Classification; 
but not, however, with true Classification ; for true Classifi- 
cation requires constant re-adjustment of class member- 
ship as mucli as does gradation. As a school is truly 
classified when the members of a class can join with the 
greatest profit in the same act of instruction, so a school 
is truly graded when each pupil in Ins forward movement 
follows the continuity of ideas determined by the natural 
growth of his mind. A graded school is not a school 
consisting of two or more rooms in the same building; 
but a school moving over a System of ideas graded by the 
pupil's law of development. Each class must be graded 
(<jr<i<his, a step); mnst move by an organic series of 
steps. 

The possibility of grading country schools used to be 
questioned, forgetting that it was impossible to do any- 
fching eise. This was not questioned in the town schools, 
because the different rooms of the school building made 
it necessary to block out the school in parts, called grades. 
This is the most superficial and mechanical sense of gra- 
dation. Closely allied to it is the notion of grades as 



116 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

being the time distances between classes. Not the school- 
room now, but the almanac, make tbe gradation. Grades 
were supposed at first to be classes a year apart in prog- 
ress of studies; and later this distance was shortened to 
a half or a third of a year, the essential idea all the 
time being that regnlarity of distance in the course is 
essential to the graded System. From this resnlted the 
evil practice of forcing and checking the natural speed of 
the class; feeling that all System is destroyed without 
adherence to mathematical measurements of space and 
time. Thus the calendar and the pages of the text usurp 
the rightful authority of the law of development. Since 
the pupil's growth is not endogenous, and by joints, 
gradation by the periodical Joint System must be a viola- 
tion of the pupil's law of growth. Whatever limitations 
may arise from practical necessity, these must not give 
law to gradation, but themselves must be adjusted to that 
law. The distance between classes is but an accidental 
result; and, taken as a law of guidance, can but work 
inischief. The only safe working conception is that of 
a single class, or pupil for that matter, thought of in 
continuous process of growth through the course of 
Instruction. 

The first step in gradation is to arrange the elements 
of subjects into naturally developing series in the experi- 
ence of the pupil. Certain ideas of the earth, and of all 
other subjects, are adapted to the child in the first period 
of his course; and, because of the acquired ideas and 
increased abilities of the first period, other ideas are 



TUE 0RGAN1SM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 117 

adapted to hini in thc second period; and so on to tlie 
close of school lifo. Such an arrangement of idoas in all 
the subjects — an arrangement from a sinall centre at tlie 
beginning of the scliool course, out to the circumference 
at the close of the course — constitutes a graded course 
of study. The development of such a course belongs to 
the subject of mstruction rather than to management; and 
has been discussed in "Thc Philosophy of Teaching," 
ander the topic, "The Process as a Complex Whole." 
Tlie course of stiuty is nothing but the process of teach- 
ing taken in its entire complexity, — the length, breadth, 
and depth of the educative process. Gradation of pupils 
assumes that such a course has been developed, and re- 
quires of scliool management only the adjustment of pupils 
to that course. 

Since the course of study has both length and breadth, 
— both warp and woof, — pupils have to be adjusted to 
both, making the problem of gradation doubly difficult. 
The pupils who may niove forward togethor in ono line 
may not always be the same pupils who can best move 
fcogether in another line. Thus the lateral movement 
in the course may re-adjust the longitudinal movement. 
And here, for the sake of class uniformity, violence is 
most frequontly done to the individual. Not gradation, 
but uniformity, requires pupils who recite together in one 
subject to recite togethor in all; or, the classes in one part 
of a city or county to do at the same time just what those 
in another part are doing. No educational reason can 
be given for the external uniformity of two schools; or, of 



118 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

the corresponding successive classes of different years in 
the sanie school. The class, because the individuals are 
to conibine in the teaching act, must be uniform in time and 
in the general preparation of the lesson; but that another 
teacher should be, at the same time, moving a class over 
the same part of the same subject, is not required by the 
law of Organization; and may be prohibited by that law. 
Even uniformity of text is not, except to a very limited 
extent, reqnired or desirable. The teacher who is free 
from the text, being possessed by the subject, will find 
diversity of texts quite desirable; except when examples 
for drill are needed, as frequently happens in arithmetic, 
grammar, and reading. 

The inherent difficulties of Classification and gradation 
are great enough without imposing mechanism and uni- 
formity on the System. The teacher will have enough to 
do to see that all the pupils in a given class, in a given 
subject, without reference to any other subject or any 
other class, are so nearly of equal ability as to join 
profitably with the teacher in the same discussion. The 
problem is thus reduced to the question of the number 
of classes, and of having strong and weak pupils in the 
same class. In many cases it is only a choice between 
two evils. It may be impossible to secure the condition 
requirecl ; but the ideal to be striven for is that stated, as 
against mere external uniformity, which is always in 
conflict with true Organization. 

The inherent difficulty is much less in city schools ; but 
these do not always make the most of their opportunity 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 119 

for close Classification. It often happens, for instance, 
that all fifth-year pupils are held to the same work, even 
when there are so many of tliem that two or more classes 
have to be t'ormed. If there are seventy-five pupils in a 
fifth-year grade, so that three classes must be formed, it 
is far better to gradually collect the strong pupils in one 
class, the weak in another, and those of medium ability 
in a middle class. And then each of these classes should 
be required to move up the inclined plane only so rapidly 
as the strength of pupils permits. There should be no 
straiuing after mile-posts. No matter whether a class 
reach a prescribed Station; let the point reached by the 
close of the term or year be notecl by the teacher, and the 
march be resumed from that point at the opening of the 
next Session. This somewhat interferes with the exter- 
nally beautiful System, but it favors the internal unity 
sought. Besides, a pupil may recite in different classes 
within the limits of an ideal Organization. Unity and 
proper Classification may require a pupil to recite read- 
ing in a fifth-reader class, and arithmetic with fourth- 
reader pupils ; even should such interfere with the 
external System. 

While a course of study may be graded apart from any 
given school, the external gradation — the adjustment of 
pupils to the course — cannot be made tili the particiliar 
school is given, and all the conditions are known. "When 
the number of pupils is small, and distributed over all 
the common-school grades of work, the distribution of 
pupils differs from the arrangement required by a school 



120 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

having double the nnmber of pupils on the same course 
of work, and taught by two teachers. And still more 
will the Variation be wlien passing to a village school 
of three hundred pupils, taught by eight teachers. 
Thus the arrangenient of pupils with reference to the 
course of study must be figured out when all the 
determining facts about the school to be graded are 
known. To show the method of doing this, I may 
be permitted to insert an illustration from "A Graded 
Course of Study," published in 1883, which was prepared 
for a school in a small city. Tlie determining facts 
were these: The course of study comprehended twelve 
years, — from primary to high school inclusive. The 
attendance was about six hundred and fifty pupils; 
and these were taught by fourteen teachers. After 
spreading out the course of study as a basis, and hav- 
ing the foregoing facts in mind, the following sketch 
is given : — 

"Now, imagine the pupils in this school, in an un- 
broken procession from the bottom to the top of this 
inclined plane, toiling upward, each doing the work best 
suited to his ability, and you will have a picture of a 
perfecfcly graded school. But, for purposes of efncient 
instruction, this unbroken procession is broken into 
groups, or sections, of about twenty or twenty-five in 
a group. Of the six hundred and fifty pupils in this 
school, there are twenty-six such groups ; each but a short 
distance and a short time behind the other. At the 
bottom of the inclined plane the groups are nearer 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 121 

together than at tlie top; because tlie number in the 
procession decreases upward, and the groups would be 
too small for practical purposes; and because, also, 
pupils of a wider ränge of ability in the upper grades 
than in the lower can be taught in a class. A few weeks' 
difference between the progress of a pupil and of a class 
in the lower grades is sufficient to prevent the pupil from 
working with the class, while this would not be true in 
the upper grades. 

'• For convenience these groups are collected into still 
larger groups. Since it takes the average pupil about 
twelve years to finish the course, the course is divided 
into twelve equal parts; and the twenty-six small groups 
are made into twelve larger ones. This gives the twelve 
grades as usually spoken of. Each of the first six of 
these years, or grades, is composed of three of the smaller 
classes above described; the seventh and eighth of these 
grades are each composed of two classes; and the last four 
of one class each. 

'• ( >n the basis of the kind of knowledge gained and 
faculties exercised, these twelve grades are made into 
tliice larger groups, called departments; each consisting 
of four grades. 

" For all of these divisions we have this diagram of tlie 
scliool. Read from bottom upward : — 



122 



SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 



f 3. Hisrh School 



' 4. Twelf th year or grade. 
3. Eleventh year or grade. 
Department. 1 2. Tentli year or grade. 
( 1. Mnth year or grade. 



f. „. . ,. , (Section % 

4. Eignth year or grade. \ 

( Sectiou 1. 



Intermediate 
Department. 



3. Seventh year or grade. 
2. Sixth year or grade. 

1. Fifth year or grade. 



Primary 
Department. 



( Section 2. 
' Section 1. 

(Section 3. 
Section 2. 
Section 1. 
Section 3. 
Section 2. 
Section 1. 

Section 3. 



3. Third year or grade. 



2. Second year or grade. 



1. First year or grade. 



f 

4. Fourth year or grade. \ Section 2. 

I Section 1, 
Section 3. 
Section 2. 
Section 1. 
Section 3. 
Section 2. 
Section 1. 
Section 3. 
Section 2. 
Section 1. 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 123 

"The sections, or classes, doing a year's work are uot 
necessarily doing the same term's work, as befors indi- 
cated; but may be one term apart. Tliis is to give 
flexibility to the System. Usually, all the pupils of any 
year are required to do the same work; but this forces 
very unequal pupils into the same classes, and niakes 
promotions and demotions less practicable; since, if a 
pupil is demoted, he must fall back a year, or if promoted, 
he will have to skip a year. Besides, this plan is entirely 
unnecessary, except when a grade is only large enough to 
make one class. Then, we are to think of each section of 
each grade working independently of the others, and doing 
the work best suited to it. This gives threefold greater 
opportunity for classing each pupil correctly, than if all 
the classes of one grade were required to do the same work. 

"Each class should be required to stay on a year's work 
tili it is done. It often happens that a slow class will 
need a year and a term, or a year and a half, in which 
to do a year's work. Such a class ought to remain on a 
year's work tili the work is done, but need not remain 
in the same room. A strong class may finish the work 
in less time than assigned, and should not be held back for 
slower classes. A pupil should be transferred from one 
class to another at any time when it is best for the pupil. 

"In describing each class, the term and the year should 
be given,thus: third term, 4's; first term, 5's; meaning, 
respectively, the highest class in the fourth year, and 
the lowest class in the fifth year. Thus should a class 
be entered on the class-record; and this, with the state- 



124 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

inent of the work of that class in this course of study, 
Avill enable any one to know just where a class belongs, 
and wliat work it has done. When a parent receives a 
card statin g tliat his child has passed ou a certain term's 
work, and is promoted to the next, by reference to this 
course he may have a definite idea of his child's progress. 
This will enable him to measure that progress, not by the 
rooms, nor even by the grades passed through, but by 
the fiele! of knowledge covered." 

The foregoing is not givenas a plan for any one to follow, 
but to emphasize the principle that the Organization of the 
school must be kept mobile to its inner life. To one who 
is aecustomed to wind up the machine, and to trust it to 
run itself for fixed periods, this constantly shifting con- 
dition of things will seem unsafe and troublesome. And 
troublesome it is, for no fixed plan can be followed ; no two 
schools are alike ; and the same school is continually shift- 
ing, requiring constant vigilance and nimble judgment on 
the part of the Superintendent. New problems are ever 
arising, whose Solution cannot be antieipated. For in- 
stance, by the foregoing scheine of Organization it appears 
that, in passing from the sixth to the seventh grade, three 
classes must be combined into two ; and in passing from 
the eighth grade to the high school, two classes must be 
combined into one. Now these combinations may have to 
be made at other points in the movement, sooner or later. 
But whenever they have to be made it will ever be a 
recurring question as to the best way of doing it. It might 
happen that the most advanced of the two classes to be 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 125 

combined into the first year's work of tlie high school could 
best spend the time in a general review, Avhile waiting for 
the lower class — not necessarily the weaker one — to com- 
plete the requirements for high school admission. Or, this 
most advanced class might, say at the beginning of tho 
eiglith year's work, check their speed by pushing out fur- 
tlier iuto details of their subject than is regularly required ; 
thus checking movement to reach the high school at the 
same time as the lower class. Or, it might be advisable for 
the class, or sorae members of it, to have a vacation for 
whatever time is required for the other class to reach the 
high school ; giving to such members of the class as desired 
directions for liues of private reading and iuvestigation, 
or special studies in school. It might happen to be best 
for the lower class — which may be the stronger of the two 
— to push work more rapidly, and joiu the other class, even 
if some points in the work had to be skipped. Or, some- 
thiug of all of these might have to be done. There is no 
eud to the possible Solutions of the problems which may 
arise under a flexible System ; and the Superintendent must 
be constantly in the movement; he cannot retire, having 
jBxed the System to run itself for a stated period. Of 
course it is much easier to manage an Organization fixed in 
straight and hard grooves. It is a simple matter to require 
uniformly all classes, or groups of classes, to keep one year 
apart, and to promote yearly by examinations. And it all 
looks well, too, — so regulär, so uniform, so systematic ; no 
tinkering with a machine which is constantly getting out of 
order. But life is not mechanism ; the school is not a 



126 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

machine ; and the Superintendent is not a stem-winding 
attachment. 

It is obvious how the simple fact of the size of the 
school modifies the foregoing scheme. If the school should 
be considerably larger than the foregoing, consisting of two 
or three ward schools the size of the above, the three sections 
might continue through the high school. If this larger 
school should be in one building, with the three sections in 
the high school, then there would be more than three sec- 
tions in the lower grades ; and the problem of combinations 
would arise again ; having disappeared with two or three 
wards, having one high school. 

It is evident also that had the number of pupils in this 
school been twice as large, and yet taught in the same 
building, there would have been twice as many divisions 
in each year's work, making it possible to have classes 
only one-half a term apart. But this would yield no 
great gain in flexibility of grading, because it will be 
found that when classes are only one term apart, the 
members of a class are of such even ability that the 
teacher will find no difficulty in satisfying individual 
needs. If the school had been twice as large, and divided 
into two wards, no change would be made in the arrange- 
ment of classes. It thus seems that a ward school con- 
sisting of about five hundred pupils below the high school, 
and taught by ten or eleven teachers, comes close to the 
ideal. A System of city schools is only a multiplication 
of such school units, organized into the centre of the Sys- 
tem, — the high school. 



THE OEGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 127 

If there liad been only two-thirds as many pupila in 
this school, and taught by eight teacliers, classes would 
liave been one-hali" a year apart, — which would have been 
good, but not so good. Especially not so good if the 
two classes had been forced, as is generally done, to do the 
same work, simply because they belong to the same year. 
Passing below this attendance and teaching force, the 
difficulty of Classification increases rapidly; and becomes 
grcatest when a single teacher has Charge of all grades 
covering the public school course to the high school; 
which often happens; and sometimes advanced classes 
are added for good count. This is the most abnormal 
and stubborn condition with which the teacher has to 
contend in organizing and instructing a so-called ungraded 
school. The foregoing Standard applied will accoinplish 
all that can be accomplished; and the teacher must not 
reproach himself for not being able to do the impossible. 
But the foregoing Standard is just as necessary for a 
teacher in such unfavorable conditions as if serving under 
ideal ones. The whole problem is to secure the best 
compromise between number of classes and diverse ability 
in each class. 

As to the number of classes for a teacher, two seems 
to be the ideal; for each class moves by alternations of 
study and recitation ; and while the teacher is waiting for 
a class to prepare work, he may be hearing another class 
recite. No problem of Organization is more easily solved, 
theoretically, than the proper number of classes for a 
teacher; but none more difficult of practica! Solution. 



128 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

Ancl the two classes should not be doing the same work ; 
not only to secure better Classification, as already indi- 
cated, but for reasons found in the process of Instruction» 
The repetition of a lesson before a class who have heard 
it dulls the zest of both teacher and pupils, besides 
interfering with the best preparation 011 the part of 
pupils. But any number above two classes is an inter- 
ference and a bürden ; in the case of young pupils, because 
the teacher cannot return to them as frequently as they 
need attention. The preparation time is longer than 
they can profitably use. It is a very great evil for a 
pri.ma.ry pupil just entering school to receive attention for 
only four short periods per day, the teacher each time hav- 
• ing been engaged one hour with three or four other classes. 
And with mature pupils the evil is also great, because it 
is impossible to consider the subject in the time allotted. 
In one case the time for study is too great; in the other 
the time for recitation is too short. Thus, in many ways, 
the number and diversity of classes is the perplexing and 
unsurmountable difficulty in sparsely settled rural dis- 
tricts. In a city the fault is not in the number of 
classes, nor lack of opportun ity to classify properly, but 
in the size of classes. The ideal is to have two classes of 
proper size, and a short distance apart in subject-matter. 
While insisting that they should be apart, the distance 
must not be great. A teacher could not easily adjust 
himself alternately to a primary and a high-school grade. 

After the pupils are classified and graded, they must 
be continually re-adjusted as Instruction proceeds. This 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 129 

is accomplished by promotions and demotions, either by 

classes or by pupils. A class progressively and imper- 
ceptibly promotes itself, and the formal act is nothing 
more than change of name; but the Single pupil is put 
back or forward with another class. The old question 
of when to promote or demote a pupil is solved by the 
foregoing discussion. Undoubtedly a pupil should be 
chauged from one class to another just as soon as Ins 
interest will thereby be subserved. There is no educa- 
tional reason for Consulting the almanac in this matter. 
Not the moon's phases, but the most effective unity is the 
criterion; and let the step be taken as soon as the need 
is discerned. 

The necessity for promoting or demoting a pupil 
becomes apparent to the teacher in the regulär daily 
work, without any test by special examination. That 
the formal, fearful, periodical examination to determine 
fitness for promotion should be abolished, and that in its 
stead should be substituted the test of daily work, is a 
foregone conclusion. Frequent written recitations, along 
with oral work, should constitute a continuous examina- 
tion. Nothing is a better test than a regulär recitation ; un- 
less value is attached to a long-impending crisis to secure 
desperate application, and heroic effort in the last onset. 

The school is not completely organized and ready for 
movement without a systematic program of exeroises. 
This cannot be made out tili the preceding steps have 
been taken; and it cannot be delayed longer, for it is 
the last step which conditions active school work. 

9 



130 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

The Program. — The severest strain put upon the 
teacher is that of keeping himself in constant unity 
with all tlie classes composing the school. To this end 
there must be a systematic time schedule for the move- 
ment of the whole; with out which there will be delays, 
collisions, and wrecks. The teacher must know in 
advance just what movements and connections are to 
be made during each Session. 

This, more than anything eise, brings that confidence 
and equipoise in meeting new situations and changes of 
movement which enthrones the teacher as master of the 
Situation. Each class and each pupil must be so well 
provided for beforehand that all may be kept constantly 
employed; and without any confusion or seeming effort 
on the part of the teacher. It is dangerous to trust to 
the spur of the moment; for the moment may come with- 
out a spur. To pro vi de fully for new situations, many 
things must be anticipated which do not have to be met. 
Too many provisions can do no härm; too few may be 
fatal. 

Especially is all this true on the first day of school, 
when a special program is required. This day is not 
more trying simply because the exercises are irregulär, 
but because the teacher is new, and on trial before the 
public sentiment of the school. The teacher who can 
hold the fort on this day has achieved a victory which 
promises success throughout. This victory comes by 
the teacher quietly keeping the whole school moving 
in unity, while organizing parts for permanent work; and 



TUE ORGAN ISA! EXECUTING THE LAW. 131 

this can be secured only by fixing precisely in mind the 
successive and simultaneous steps of all the parts during 
the Session of Organization. It is not sufficient merely to 
write ont the program; the first day's work must have 
been lived through in idea so frequently that the teacher 
moves through the work with the custom and ease of life. 
It is said that a criminal who is to be executed walks 
up the scaffold so constantly in idea while in his cell 
that, when he comes to walk in reality before the awe- 
stricken spectators, his tread is firm and steady. Thus 
men prepare for trying situations, and the first day of 
school is one of tliem. If the teacher has not lived the first 
day in idea more than what is required to write out its 
program, expecting to turn to the desk to see what is 
next to be done, he cannot move with unruffled confidence 
and steady power. Hence the first day of school, in all 
the details which bring the whole into constant unity, 
must become a part of the life of the teacher by antici- 
pation, prolonged thought, and meditation. For instance, 
the teacher must have decided, and must have gone through 
tbc Performance in idea many times, just when and how 
he is to secure the names of the pupils ; whether to pass 
around, as of old, and write down each name as the pupil 
gives it when called upon. Or, would such a process, 
Ingaging but one pupil at a time, permit dissolution of 
fche school; and be fatal to that business dispatch which 
begets confidence in pupils and sense of power in the 
teacher. If the teacher expects to develop a lesson, and 
assign work to a class, he must be very sure that he has 



132 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

some good employment for every member of every otlier 
class. ' Such precautions neglected, embarrassment is sure 
to follow ; and the teacher becomes a Zekle in " The 
Courtin '," wlio 

"... stood a spell on one foot fust, 
Then stood a spell on t' otlier, 
An' on which one he feit the wüst, 
He could n't ha' told ye imther." 

Witb such lack of poise and precision of movement, 
Mie pupils will feel by the close of the first day that 
fche school is in weak hands; and so would the critical 
observer, for this is the real keynote of the teacher's 
managing ability. 

But, after the school is well started, the systematic 
movement by regulär program is essential to order and dis- 
patch of work; unity of the whole being the constant and 
absolute requirement. The problem is to keep every pnpil 
of every class at work all the time, wasting no time and 
energy, whatever the teacher may need to turn to. This 
is more than the problem of class unity; it is that of the 
unity of all the classes in the school movement as a 
whole. To this end the teacher must move systematically 
by a daily program; not necessarily by the same, perhaps 
necessarily not; but the exact written program must be 
the basis, from which Variation may be made when occa- 
sion requires. Hence, however varying the life and 
movement of the school may be, the teacher must fix 
a scheine of class movements. 

In this he must be especially careful to provide for the 



TUE OEGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 133 

study period, the class reciting being sure of engagement. 
Until recently the teacher gave little attention to this 
point; thinking that teaching is hearing the recitation, 
lie left pupils to shii't for themselves while out of it. But 
now we understand that the teacher shows at least as 
nmcli skill, and serves the pupil as efficiently, in provid- 
mg eniployment as in hearing the lesson. So that what 
the pupils are to accomplish during study time must he 
as definitely put into the program as the topic of recita- 
tion. The written program, however, can show the 
imployment only in geueral; the program for each day, 
as well as for the first day, must be made out daily. 
Nothing can so mach insure success for any day's "\vork, 
as time spent on the evening or morning before each day, 
in setting up for guidance and Inspiration the ideal Per- 
formance for the day. Thus only can be insured precision 
of action, and certainty and force in execution. 

Pupils in Active ühity with Teacher. 

Whether or not there be one or more classes in charge 
of a single teacher, the work moves by alternate periods 
of study and recitation; and the teacher must strive as 
Barefully to secure unity with pupils in the preparation 
of work as with those reciting. 

Unity in Class Studying. — The ideal to be secured 
in the class, or classes, studying is the undivided and 
the greatest possible stress of attention during the study 
period on the thought assigned to be worked out. This 



134 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

is unity, not primarily of pupils among themselves, but 
witli the teacher; although the teacher may at the tiine 
be studying, or conducting a recitation. 

1. The first matter to receive attention is tlie condition 
of pupils before they are set to work. These conditions 
have already been emmierated, and are supposed to be 
supplied in general; but they must be continually re- 
adjusted at every breathing space in the work; especially 
at the beginning of the study and the recitation periods. 
All immediate physical wants of the pupils must be 
relievecl, by attention to the condition of the room, and by 
recreation through rest and gymnastic exercise. A song 
before beginning study is a most potent means of reviving 
the spirits and touing the mind for the study hour. The 
teacher cannot afford to neglect any means which brings 
comfort and vigor and unity of mood to pupils before 
turn in g them to the preparation of the next lesson. The 
brief, spirited exercise and song more than compensate 
for the time consumed. The teacher who aspires to 
skillful management must not tire of little things, but 
must be alert to every detail of conditions which focuses 
energy on the work in hand. 

2. The condition and attitude of pupils now favoring 
work, the assignment of the lesson is in orcler. Since 
teacher and pupils are to be one in the preparation of 
the lesson, the teacher, before it is possible to assign the 
lesson effectively, must have traced out all the thought 
relations in the subject assigned, which he wishes the 
pupil to trace out. If the teacher assigns the lesson by 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 135 

pages, without being conscious of the thought effort re- 
quired in mastering what is assignecl, there can be no 
unity. Without such preparatiou on the part of tlie 
teaeher, it would be a mere accident if the lesson were 
assigned so as to secure efficieut effort on the part of the 
pupil. 

Let it be noted again that the unity desired is pri- 
marily, not that among pupils, but that between pupils 
and teaeher. If the pupils focus their attention on the 
thought which the teaeher has planned for tliem, unity 
among themselves will be incidentally secured. The 
unity essential may be secured by pupils studying at 
different times and places, as is done with College 
students. The only reason for requiring the pupils of 
common-school gracles to study by program, at a given 
time and place, is that they have not the power to impose 
their own limit of time and place. This is the principle 
involved in the discussion of whether high school students 
should study at home. This question does not arise 
with the primary grade, nor with the seniors in a College; 
because the first without question cannot limit themselves 
to their task, while the second can do so. The primary 
pupil is to be trained into the power of self-limitation 
by imposing limits upon him. Since we scarcely know 
what to do with high school pupils in this respect, they 
must be in the transitional phase. The decision turns on 
whether they are so diseiplined that tliey can self-impose 
their own task. 

But the unity to be secured in the class studying, 



136 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

whether by strict requirement of time and place, by 
program in the school-room, or by independent self- 
direction as to time and place, is the unity with the 
teacher in the thought to be worked out in the lesson. 
This brings our attention to one of the essential condi- 
tions of unity in the class studying, which is, that the 
lesson must first have been fully experienced by the 
teacher before assigning it for study by the class. 

Teachers have learned fairly well that the preparation 
of a lesson is necessary in the recitation; but there is yet 
great need of conviction that careful preparation of a 
lesson is also essential to its proper assignment. This 
error arises x as do most others, from a false conception of 
the process of teaching. When teaching is conceived as a 
mechanical process of imparting results measurable by 
some special Standard, as length of paragraph or page, 
then the lesson can be assigned by length and breadth 
of printed matter, and without any previous prepara- 
tion other than eye measurement. Bat to measure the 
thought to be compassed by the pupil, requires a detailed 
preparation of the lesson as a condition of intelligent 
assignment. 

3. The lesson should be so clearly and defmitely 
assigned that the pupil can neither mistake nor escape 
what is to be done. It is well to have several pupils state 
just what is to be worked out during the study time ; or, 
a better form, to require each of several to state just what 
he expects to work out during the time. Often a written 
assignment of the lesson on the board will hold the pupils 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 137 

to more definite study, and the teacher to more definite 
assignnient. This is a vital point in securing order; and 
the teacher must not feel that time is wasted in causing 

the pupils to put clearly and fully before 'themselves a 
specific topic, and a probleni concerning it, which they 
are to work out. 

This guards the pupil against supposing that the prep- 
aration of his lesson consists in mastering the form of what 
is said; or that it is limited to the outline of thought as tlie 
text must necessarily put it. He will thus be influenced 
to the use of reference books and library, and have his 
views enlarged and liberalized concerning the topic under 
discussion. The study period, as well as the recitation, 
is the teacher's opportunity to train pupils to proper 
habits of thought and investigation; and the teacher must 
recognize and iinprove the opportunity as much in the one 
case as in the other. 

4. After each pupil has decided just what he is going 
to do, he must note whether he has all things needed für 
the work, and whether anything about him is not needed. 
All unnecessary things must be removed, and the pupil 
supplied witli all that he may chance to need in the 
preparation of his lesson. lf he is cold or thirsty, now 
is the time to attend to his wants. He must kuow that 
after the class has begun the lesson. he cannot get a 
pencil, fix the fire, or borrow a knife; that he must speak 
before the signal for work, or ever after hold Ins peace. 

5. When each niind is made clear as to the work to 
be done, and all the wants have been supplied, some quiet 



138 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

signal, as a nod, — all the pupils attentive to the teacher, 
— should be given for work to begin. The teacher should 
now pause before the class tili he feels that all are in firm 
tension with the lesson. It is waste of time to be in 
nervous haste to pass to the recitation. A moment's 
pause and a quiet withdrawal strongly favor continued 
attention during the absence of the teacher. 

6. While the teacher is conducting a recitation, no pupil 
in the class not reciting should be permitted to change work, 
speak to any one, get anything which should have been be- 
fore supplied/fix the fire, ask the teacher about his lesson, 
etc. If the teacher has carefully provided for all the pupil's 
wants there can be no necessity for giving hirn attention 
now. To stop the recitation to answer his question is to 
give the time of the twenty in the class to the one. He has 
no right to break the unity between the teacher and the 
class. If he finds now that he needs a pencil, to supply 
hirn would cultivate a want of foresight; and by to-morrow 
he will want both pencil and book. He cannot get the 
pencil during the study time without breaking up the 
whole school, for a moment, at least. If he should pass 
to get a drink, or fix the fire, all work must stop for his 
convenience. His study time will, perhaps, continue not 
. over thirty minutes ; and if the teacher has attended to all 
wants , as he should have done, the pupil will not die for any- 
thing in so short a time, however warmly he may plead his 
cause. I do not mean that there are no circumstances 
under which the pupil may move and accommodate him- 
self to his work. If the stove becomes too warm, or 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 139 

if he needs to consult reference books, he should movefrom 
his desk without asking the teacher. It is a great gain 
in discipline and self-control for the pupil to take himself 
in Charge so far as possible. We must not have foolish 
notions about obedience, and give the pupil to understand 
that he must not breathe without pennission from head- 
quarters. Freedom of the pupil undet his own judgment 
as to what is proper is the only way to secure the unity 
desired, and to cultivate the power of self-control. 

It is not quite so clear that the pupil should not change 
his work during the study time of a given lesson. Sup- 
pose a strong pupil gets his history lesson in half the 
time assigned, should he not turn to some other les- 
son? This is better than for him to sit idle, or be stir- 
ring up fuu. The fallacy is in the supposition. He has 
not his lesson, if it be well assigned. If so many para- 
graphs are given to learn, he may commit them, and, hav- 
ing a watch with stop attachment, may note the second 
and fraction of a second in which he made the course. 
T>ut I have in mind a real teacher, who gives the class a 
problem to work out; and a problem is elastic. Suppose 
he is to work out the battle of Bunker Hill; to create a 
füll and vivid picture; to note its purpose and results, 
inimediate and remote; to mark its parts, and their rela- 
tions to each other; or something of this sort. Where 
is the end to this lesson? This battle may be treated 
in two paragraphs, which he might commit in half the 
allotted time. In such a case, he ought to change his 
work; and the sooner the better. This battle has enough 



140 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

to engage all the power of the liistorian for tliirty rninutes 
or tliirty days. Wliy not put it to the class so that the 
strongest might exhaust his time and strength, and yet 
the weakest have something he can profitably do? 

It is easy for a pupil to persuade himself that he has 
his lesson, and dangerous to indulge him in that directum. 
What he needs, more than history, is power to fasten his 
thought on a given problem. The strict requirements of 
the study period should confer this power. One of the 
best disciplinary opportunities in the school is just this 
furnished by the study time, in which the teacher can 
help the pupil to hold himself conti nuously to one object 
of thought. His untrained mind moves to its work con- 
fusedly, and leaps from one thing to another without 
method and continuity. The strict requirement of unity 
is essential, not only in learning the assigned lesson, but 
to the more valuable eud of continued and concentrated 
attention on whatever he undertakes to master. To keep 
interesfcing story books on the teacher's desk, that a pupil 
may interest and busy himself after he thinks he has done 
his lesson, while better than flogging for mischief, does 
not favor orcler and good discipline. This indulges his 
caprice, and encourages him to persuade himself that he 
knows what he does not know, and defeats discipline in 
power of concentration and continued effort; certainly a 
quality as much to be desired as the knowledge to be 
gained in the study period. 

No; the more one thinks of it, so far as the lower grades 
of school are concerned, the more rigid does the law appear 



TUE OKGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 14t 

that the pupil must not change his subject of study 
during the programmed time for class-study. When such 
a requirement becomes useless to hitn, he no longer needs 
to study under the immediate direction of the teacher. 
Let it be concluded, therefore, that, unless the house is 
on fire, pupils in the class study ing must stick, without 
wavering, to the question set for that time. 

Unity in Class Reciting. — The ideal to be secured in 
the class reciting is, that all pupils fuse with the teacher 
in an unbrokeu effort to gvasp the problem under con- 
sideration. Again, let us insist that the unity of one 
pupil with another — a mere external unity — is not the 
unity desired. Such a unity will be secured as a result 
of the essential unity of pupils with teacher. The skill 
of the teacher in the recitation will be summed up in 
the degree of undivided effort secured. The greater the 
amount and intensity of mental activity aroused iu con- 
junction with the thought of the teacher, the higher 
should be our estimate of the teaching skill. 

1 . The first point to receive attention here is the same 
as that already discussed for securing attention in the 
class study ing, — namely, the comfortable, buoyant, and 
spirited condition of pupils; and since, if more than one 
elass, the recitation and the study begin practically 
together, the conditions are secured at the same time. 

2. The other general condition essential to unity is 
that of thorough preparation on the part of both teacher 
and pupil. On the part of the pupil, this has been 
provided for in the study hour. No source of failure is so 



142 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

fruitful as tlie lack of preparation of the lesson by the 
teacher-. The teacher must have so mastered the lesson 
that he feels his freedom in the thought to be presented. 
Vague and partial knowledge cannot guide and strengthen. 
The thought of the lesson must have beeu so mastered 
that the teacher will feel perfectly at home in whatever 
new and unexpected turn the discussion may take; and 
such turn it is sure to take. 

The lesson must be thoroughly prepared, not only to 
enable the teacher to guide with steacly hand the various 
activities of the pupils to the end sought, but also to 
draw all to himself by the law of unconscious sympathy. 
A teacher has no right to hear a lesson until he has 
become inspired through a deep study of it; and then, 
approaching the class filled and thrilled with his message, 
the pupils unconsciously bend forward, and are fused into 
one by the heat of his thought. Skill in teaching can 
never be cold and mechanical. Whatever the thought to 
be presented, it must be so wrought into the teacher's 
being, that it will glow with warmth of life. And note 
that this is not merely an interest in the matter of the 
lesson, but an interest in the result to be produced in the 
pupil by meaus of the lesson. The preparation of the 
lesson is the study of the matter in relation to the life 
of the pupil. The teacher's problem is, "What change can 
I make in the pupil' s life by the means now at my com- 
mand?" This problem thoroughly entered into, and the 
teacher becomes burdened with a message to his pupils. 
Seeing clearly his means, and feeling deeply his oppor- 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 143 

tunity, he approaches bis class with that flush and glow 
of interest which kindles the thought and warms the heart 
of those lie instracts. It is all a question of downright 

earnestness and sincerity of purpose; a burning desire to 
quicken the soul of the child into the highest good of 
life. 

3. The next step is to secure the outer form of unity, 
and the attitude of attention. The desks should be 
cleared of everythiug not needed in the recitation. The 
class should be seated in a compact form; and all lines 
Btraight from front to back, and from right to left. There 
should be no vacant place within the compass of the class. 
Tlir class should look well as a body. The teacher cannot 
think straight in the presence of a crooked and ragged 
form. The question often arises: "Ought classes to re- 
bite in their study forms, or be called to recitation seats?" 
This cannot be answered tili all the conditions are given. 
The place should be chosen which will best secure unity 
under the conditions. The question of removing the elass 
to prevent disturbance of others is a determining factor. 
The ideal is a neatly and compactly formed class, re- 
inoved, if necessary, so as not to disturb, or be disturbed 
by, others. Now, with the eyes of the pupils fixed on the 
teacher. in obedience to some noiseless signal, all are 
ready for the thought movement of the lesson. 

4. The thought of the class will move forward by 
means of directions, questions, and explanations or 
lectures. 

Directions. — In giving directions, the golden rule is 



144 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

to give the direction so that all pupils will do the same 
thing at the same time. There may be exceptions — but 
they are rare — permitting one part of the class to do one 
thing, while others are differently engaged. Nothing, for 
example, could be more inartistic and less effective than 
to announce in turn different sentences for the members 
of the class to pass to the board and diagram. Each one 
is concerned with his own little affair, and as soon as a 
pupil has written his sentence he may turn his thoughts 
to mischief, or prop himself up against the wall, waiting 
patiently for his slow turn. Without passing to the 
board, wasting time and chalk, all minds might be riveted 
on the same thought concerning the sentence, allowing 
no time for dozing or dissipation. Thus each pupil is 
required to put forth his most intense activity for the 
entire time, avoiding the half-asleep kind of thinking so 
fatal to intellectual life. This, however, according to 
some theories, may be all wrong, as it interferes with the 
pupil 's freedom and individuality. 

Here is a picture taken from life: School-room of two 
grades (seventh and eighth), of about twenty pupils each. 
Good teacher, as the world goes; lesson in denominate 
numbers by the seventh grade. Teacher directs one boy 
to pass to the board and solve the first problem; another, 
the second; and so on tili the ten problems are used. 
Then, commencing again with the first problem, re-assigns 
the ten problems severally to the next ten pupils. A few 
pupils still remain without work, and these are given 
selected problems to work at desks, the board all being 



THE OIIGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 145 

occupied. The teacher now steps back to talk to the 
visitor while waiting developments. Things alvays 
develop rapidly under such circumstances; and soon the 
teacher is needed by a girl working at her desk, where 
teacher and pupil discuss the problem. Note here that it 
is all right for teacher and pupil to talk during recitation , 
because the teacher makes the rules : two pupils must not 
talk; except to help each other, as they say. And this 
they soon do, for the bright girl points the way to the 
dull boy. The first boy has done his sum; and, rather than 
waste time, punches the fire, which is already too hot. 
Another bright lad cultivates the fantasy and freehand 
drawing; while sorae laggards toil on, with and without 
help, hopeless, and despairing of victory before time is 
called. The first boy explains to those who have done their 
work, while others toil on. Fill out the picture at your 
leisure. In all it was a splendid display of self-activity, 
free thnught, and free speech. 

What would that teacher have gained if he had required 
all the problems to be put in neat form of process on 
slates or note books; so that at the recitation he might 
have done something like this: Called on the class as a 
whole for the first step in the problem, permitting one to 
Bpeak for the class; then have said, "Take the step," 
calling on one to speak for the class again. And thus 
moving rapidly tili all problems were solved. With pupils 
neat, prim, and orderly in their desks, each pupil might 
have been compelled fco fchink each problem through, and 
so have multiplied immeasurably the amount and intensity 

10 



146 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

of thought for the given time. The recitation is not the 
time to wait for a pupil to solve a problem. All must be 
ready to pull together, and the teacher must see to it that 
the highest conabined energy of thought is secured. 

Such recitations as the above do not only require no 
effort in recitation, but require no effort in preparation. 
Each pupil, knowing that he has but one problem to solve, 
is apt to take his chances without definite preparation. 
He will read the first problem, and decide that he can 
solve it on the spur of the moment. If he finds one that 
is peculiarly difficult, he knows that twenty chances to 
one it will coine to some one eise. If he is a f armer 's 
boy, and trained to bind wheat all day under a scorching 
sun, he may know no better than to work away with all 
his might; but such industry does not come from the 
teaching. 

Questions. — This is a unique method of instruction, 
based on the assumption that knowledge is born in the 
mind, — is of the mind, and not something to be put into it 
from the outsicle. Teaching by giving directions partakes 
somewhat of the same nature, but not so exclusively. 
The question is a clear recognition of the fact that knowl- 
edge is a process in the mind of the learner, — a favorite 
doctrine of Socrates, on which was based the Socratic 
question. The chief merit in his method of instruction 
was not so much in the fact that he used an ingenious 
form of questioning, as in the due recognition of self- 
activity in the process of learning. With him instruc- 
tion could not deliver ideas by conveyance from one to 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 147 

another, but must stimulate self-activity iuf<> processes of 
Knowledge. The new education dates back at least to 
Socrates. 

In thus stinmlating seli'-activity the questioning of Soc- 
tates took a, surprising turn. Usually questions are asked 
to obtain Information. The one addressed is assumed to 
know the answer, while the questioner is supposed to be 
Ignorant of it. When you ask a man the way to town, 
he is supposed to know, but you are not. On any other 
assumption he would ordinarily feel that your question 
is impertinent. The vexing thing about the questioning 
of Socrates was the fact that he asked questions of people 
not supposed to know the answer; and not for the purpose 
of gaining information, as he ironically pretended to do. 
People were not used to such impertinence, and sometimes 
talked angrily to Socrates, and refused to answer bis iron- 
ical questions; whioh, while bringing Socrates no infor- 
mation, made other people so unpleasantly conscious of 
tgnorance. After all that has been said about the Socratic 
question, T suppose the unique thing about it was the 
reversal of the ordiuary movement of thought in a ques- 
tion. The Socratic question is simply the teaching 
question. His exceptional skill in the use of it could not 
have given rise to a (listinet species of questioning. He 
may have made excessive use of pretence to be asking 
questions in the customary way; henee the ironical 
ffeature; but the chief point is the use of the question in 
leaching as different from that in gaining information. 

The foregoing suggests the true nature and principle of 



148 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

questioning. The qtiestion causes a tension between the 
niind and an object, and ehallenges the mind to cancel 
the tension. The mind, quiescent, is made conscious of 
ignorance ; then the tension arises, which tends to release 
itself in knowledge. The teaching question makes the 
mind conscious of limitation, but requires the removal of 
limitation in the acquisition of knowledge. Thus it is 
clear that that question is best which sets up the strongest 
tension between the mind and the unknown object. The 
differences in the art of questioning are finally tested at 
this point ; and if the teacher will recall his experience 
in questioning, he will discover that his effort and his dif- 
ficulty have been to secure the required stress on the part 
of the pupil. The law, therefore, requires that the ques- 
tion secure the highest possible tension of thought on the 
point under discussion ; that it be put so that the pupil 
must think; not dream, guess, or answer automatically. 

Turning now to questioning classes, the law must have 
an additional emphasis, — that of forcing every member of 
the class to think the answer. 

This is the fundamental truth in all directions as to 
how, and how not, to question. For instance, it is 
properly said that the question should be asked before 
designating the one to answer. If the teacher should say, 
"John, you may stand now ; I wish to ask you a question. 
Which is the longest river in the world ?" the other 
members of the class are excused, and each may engage 
in his own line of thought. But if the teacher should 
say, "Which is the longest river in the world?" and then, 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 1-jD 

after a short pause, and without any indication as to 
whom the question wonld fall, say, "John," all inust 
have thought the answer in expectation of giving it. No 
matter if only one lias answered, all have recited. It is 
said that a teacher should not call on pupils in regulär 
order. Tliis follows from the fact that a pupil may 
anticipate his question, and withdraw from the line of 
thought tili his turn comes. A teacher should not indi- 
cate, by naming, by gesture, by look, or by regulär order 
of procedure, the one who is to answer until all are think- 
ing the answer. 

We are told not to ask questions which can be answered 
by yes or no. Such questions can be answered without 
thinking; and pupils say yes and no automatically, while 
thinking of things other than the subject under considera- 
tion. Such questions are easy to ask; and, since in one 
chance out of two the pupil hits the perfect answer, many 
fall into this loose form of questioning. 

Verbose questioning is a serious and common error 
against unity. "Xow, Mary, I wish, if } r ou please, you 
would answer nie this question: Who is the author of 
1 Show Bound '?" All of this, except the question, is not 
only useless, but dissipates the energy of the class by not 
giving them something to do. Still better to put it in 
this form: "Author of 'Snow Bound' ?" This is quickly 
done, and perfectly clear. Many such can be dropped out 
and answered, while a single one, like the first, would 
drag its slow length along. As a rule, one-half the words 
used by the teacher may be omitted, and the eft'ect multi- 



150 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

plied. We like to hear ourselves talk, and keep the air 
rolling with sound, thinking that there rnust be highly 
charged thought with so muoli rumbling noise. A pas- 
senger at the Terre Haute Station says to the agent: 
" Good-morning, sir. Can you wait on me now? Will 
you please give me a ticket to Indianapolis ? " Why 
not say, " A ticket to Indianapolis " ? Better this : " To 
Indianapolis." Best this : " Indianapolis. 'V It will be 
perfectly clear, if the word is accompanied with a five 
dollar bill ; and, be&ides, the passenger may hope to take 
the first train. So in teaching : the polite, formal, and 
verbose deliverance may often be reduced to a monosyl- 
lable, and avoid leaving passengers beliind the train of 
thought. 

Mxplanations or Lectures. — In giving pupils directions, 
or in asking them questions, they are supposed to be able 
to put things together, and to reach conclusions them- 
selves ; and these methods put the subject-matter before 
pupils so as to stimulate them to make such original 
constructions. There may arise conditions which require 
the teacher to give aid in explanations, and sometimes, 
in the more formal lecture. This method assumes that 
pupils have already arrived at an active, anxious State of 
mind touching the subject of discussion. If pupils are 
indifferent, or relaxed in mental attitude, talk will not 
reach them ; they themselves must be put to work on the 
problem. Students know well how easy it is to take a 
course by lectures in university work ; and even the best 
student will relax his effort when put in the receptive 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW 151 

rather than in the constructive attitude. The lecture 
Inethod is an excellent one für the professor ;- for he mnst 
Haus initiate, construct, and investigate Systems of thought. 
The value of this to hiraself ought to convince him that it 
would be best to direct the Student to original investiga- 
tions and constructions, and require the Student to deliver 
the lecture to the patient and long-suffering professor, 
rather than cultivate such virtues in the student. 

Yet the teacher must explain, and sometimes lecture; 
but this must be done warily, because the pupil so easily 
rehixes mental energy when the teacher assumes the 
responsibility. Such method is needed and proper only 
when pupils are brought to such firm tension with their 
subject that no risk of relaxation is assumed. Only then 
will talk from the teacher reach its aim. There are 
classes and audiences in such attitude as not only to 
justify, but to require, continued discourse from the in- 
structor. Such method, when the conditions permit, 
Becures rapidity in development of thought. Develop- 
ment by directions and questions is a tedious process ; and 
when the teacher is sure that the development avüI go on 
in the pupil's mind by merely listening to discourse, he 
should use the more expeditious method. So that the 
lecture method, like any other method, cannot be praised 
or blamed in itself ; it is all a question of adaptation to 
known conditions in the mind of the learner. While its 
use is most efficient when the conditions justify, it can be 
rarely justified ; and as rarely in the university as in the 
kindergarten. So rare indeed is its proper use, that the 



152 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

ideal of the teacher should be that of keeping as nearly 
silent as possible during the recitation. ISTo fault of tlie 
recitation is more obstrusive than tbat of too mucli talk 
frorn the teacher. The beautiful recitation is marked by 
the quietness and seeming lack of effort on the part of 
the teacher, accompanied by mental strain and stress on 
the part of pupils. The recitation is for the sake of the 
pupil's effort and not the teacher's; and whatever display 
of energy there may be must come from them and not 
from him. Quite offen the brilliant Performance of the 
teacher in the recitation puts under suspicion the value of 
his work to the class. The artistic teacher will obscure 
himself as much as possible, and make as prominent as 
possible the effort and products of his pupils. Anything 
eise, since the class is the end and the teacher the means, 
is distortion. 

Obstacles in Forward Movement. — A chief obstacle in 
maintaining the movement of the class in unity is that of 
diverse ability in its membership, and the necessity of 
helping the weak pupil. The temptation in such cases is 
to give personal help; and the question often arises as to how 
f ar the giving of special help is permissible during the reci- 
tation period. In this matter the principle of unity is the 
sufficienb guide. We have seen that in the very nature 
of class work it is all individual help; but that it must 
always be the help of all. This principle of helping all 
in every act of Instruction must not be violated; but its 
application is so elastic as to permit much aid to the weak 
pupil while continuing the activity of the strong. 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 153 

Suppose a pupil fails to i'ollow the development of an 
idea in class, the teacher must begin at the first and 
mlevelop with the whole class. This process may be 
repeated up to the point of risk in losing attention of 
other members of the class through a sense of familiarity 
and useless repetition. It is always probable that a con- 
siderable repetition of the process is good for all; but when 
it passes this point, the weak pupil must secure the Ser- 
vices of the teacher out of Session hours. Instead of keep- 
ing the pupil in, it seems much nicer to the pupil to keep 
the teacher in ; and if the teacher understands his relation 
to the pupil, and desires a quiet and a happy household, 
he will iugeniously and cheerfully shift requirement and 
responsibility of keeping in after school to the side of the 
pupil. A cheerful offering of Service after school hours, 
when the pupil has been niade to feel the need of that 
Service, releases the teacher from further responsibility. 
At any rate, if the pupil does not feel the need of the 
assistance and thus desire it, the friotion caused by his 
forcible detention renders useless the Service of the teacher 
after school hours. 

In the process of recitation, the teacher must avoid 
thrusting anything between the thought on the point under 
discussion and the minds of the class. A prominent form 
of this is that of requiring pupils to recite in words of 
the text, as if the text were a collection of memory gems. 
The recitation is a movement of thought on a given theme, 
and whatever requires straining to eonform to language, 
when the form of language is not essential, checks the 



154 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

free movement of thought. The memoriter recitation may 
be very beautiful in outer form, but, closely inspected, it 
reveals distortion. The pride of the teacher in the prim 
and so-called perfect recitation leads to formal and 
mechanical work, which defeats the object of the recita- 
tion. This prev-ails to such an extent that it is well to 
beware of the pretty and perfect recitation. 

When a history class, seated ever so correctly, with 
arms folded, say off in Order, eaoh in turn, the paragraphs 
of the lesson, and repeat by ingenious distribution tili all 
show perfect preparation, it is not beautiful, because not 
the freedom of the inner life. Yet teachers have com- 
manded exceptional salaries for skill in neat, ingenious 
mechanism. Two kinds of recitation in geometry are 
often heard. In one each member moves through the 
demonstration without a halt, and triumphanfcly ; follow- 
ing the figures and letters precisely as given in the text. 
In the other, the members struggle, stumble, and fail in 
the effort at original demonstration; but in this case there 
is intense and free demonstrative activity, while in the 
former there is but the pretence of demonstration ingem 
iously obscured by the perfect form of it. The recitation 
is beautiful just in proportion as it secures energy of 
thought, however struggling and halting it may seem; and 
the beautiful external form may be secured at the expense 
of this. The neat, prim form of recitation is to be 
desired; all things should be done decently and in order; 
but the beauty of form should be discriminated from the 
beauty of life, and not permitted to crush out the lifo it 
is to serve. 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 155 

Another very effective method of shackling the move- 
ment of thought, is tbat of constraining pupils to think 
;uk1 express in conformity witli the teacher's thought and 
sxpression. This is a most subtle form of the cramming 
process, and practiced mach by those who condemn tbat 
process. They would not for the world force pupils to 
the acceptance of ready-made products of the text; bat 
thev manage to bring pupils around exactly to their own 
forms and conclusions. 

The guessing, or developing, lesson is a very populär 
mode of obstructing the free movement of thought. We 
are told tbat we must not teil the pupil anything which 
he.can find out for himself; and straightway we infer tbat 
he can find out everytbing, and tbat it must be developed 
out of bim. Often when we think such has been accom- 
plished, it comes either from a sly hint from the teaeber, 
or from a Statement of a member of the class. In most 
cases when a class throw up hands, and the teaeber 
exclaims, "Behold it has been developed!" it has only 
beeil surmised and guessed at by many wasteful efforts. 
The tinie wasted in the over-developing process is alarm- 
ing. When the teaeber knows tbat he must virtually give 
the ])oint to the class, as will often happen, he should do 
so at once; and not stop to practice developing, and to play 
with bis art. Guessing lessons are not thinking lessons; 
and the pupil ought novertobe put in the attitudeof guess- 
ing at wliat is in the teacher's mind. 

Again, to sit with class-book and pencil, noting the 
exaet weight of the thought delivered, in pwt. and gr., is 



156 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

fatal to the füllest and freest activity on the part of the 
pupil; and, for that matter, the teacher also. Especially 
is this objectionable when the teacher threatens the pupil 
with his poor marking. "There goes another zero for 
you ; you will have this work all to do over if you do not 
begin to niake a better record soon." This leads nie to 
speak more broadly of the law of sympathy between 
teacher and pupil as the great secret of unity between the 
two. 

Unity is mainly secured by the law of sympathy 
between the mind of the teacher and the pupil in the 
activity of thought. It has already been noted that the 
teacher should become inspired with the lesson before 
attempting to hear it ; and when the recitation comes, the 
class will be unconsciously drawn into his thought, and 
without conscious means on the part of the teacher. What 
I wish especially to emphasize here is that the teacher 
must not, by personal attack of any kind, interrupt the 
flow of good feeling between himself and pupils. While 
warmly personal, the teacher must be impersonal. There 
must be no personal conflict. Suppose the boy fails to 
recite, the teacher should not say: "You have been trifling 
your time away; I heard you were loafing last night 
instead of getting your lesson. You will have to do this 
work all over, if you do not mend your ways." I know 
of no circumstances under which a pupil should be berated 
in the presence of the class. He must be treated politely, 
— that is, as if he were an ideal student. Teachers often 
complain of the impoliteness of pupils; but teachers are 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 157 

mach more frequently guilty of this offence. Personal 
reproof in class is a most common practice, from the 
primary grades through the College. The pupil who does 
poorly should be privately interviewed by the teacher; 
and then the case should be approached with sympathy, 
as if there were some reason for the poor preparation, — 
bad health, too much work to do, visit from distant rela- 
tive, etc. It is easy to make a grave blunder by off-hand 
charges. It is safest at the time to suppose that the 
failure is excusable, and then privately press it to the real 
reason, commencing with excusable ones. 

So far the attempt has been to illustrate the doctrine of 
tmity in school-management, when all minds are favorably 
disposed. Through ignorance, thoughtlessness, or wil- 
fulness, unity may be broken; it must then be restored. 
This brings us to the delicate and important question : — 

Restoration of Broken Un ity. 

This topic has, in general, the saine significance as that 
of correction, or punishment; but the wording is prefer- 
able, especially to that of punishment, because it does not 
convey so prominently the idea of inflictiug pain, which 
is not essential to restoration of unity. We need first to 
search out, in light of the law of unity : — 

The Law of Restoration. — This must be found in the 
spiritual unity of the organism; for it is this, and not the 
ezternal form of unity, that is to be restored. When 
pupils bolt the recitation, the material and external side 



158 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

of the unity is broken ; but this is only the result of the 
broken Spiritual unity. What the law requires is not a 
spatial unity, nor even a unity of forcecl consent; but the 
cheerful purposed co-operation of pupils witli teacber. 

We are so accustomed to think of tbis matter under the 
name and law of punishment, that it may be most easily 
approached from that Standpoint. When rightly inter- 
preted, the law of punishment is well stated in saying: 
Punishment must naturally folloiv the offence, and be pro- 
portioned to it. This has, however, been most viciously 
applied. Suppose a boy has played truant a quarter of a 
day; then, by the nature of the offence, it is thought he 
should remain in after school to make up lost time. And 
to make it mathematically proportionale, he should remain 
in just the length of time lost. The girl whispers, and 
thus annoys the teacher; it is but just that she be equally 
annoyed by the teacher. One boy blacks the eye of 
another; and, in turn, he must be bruised in equal area. 
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Pupils show 
that they understand this mathematical System of justice 
by insisting that the sarae number of lashes should follow 
the sanie offence. When offences are equal, it would not 
do for the teacher to give one boy four lashes and the 
other five. 

This idea of the law above stated must be put aside as 
a dangerous one. The thought of getting even with the 
offender must never guide the teacher. Retribution must 
have no place in punishment. Tt is external means 
applied to the external side of the offence ; it can never 



THE QRGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 159 

reach the offence', but always aggravates it. During tlie 
trials and worry of the day the teacher is in a mood to 
"pay up " for everything that annoys liim ; but he must 
crush every Suggestion of the so-called even-handed 
justice. 

Let it not be forgotten that punishment, or correction, 
is for the purpose of restoring unity, and that the above 
law is a statement of the means to that end. The trouble 
in applying the law is in not noting carefully the nature 
of an offence. The offence is in the will, the choice, of the 
pupil, and not in his external deed. In itself it is not 
wrong to stay out of school. If the pupil has the measles, 
it is even right to remain out. To be abseilt a week is 
right, when, by so doing, means are secured to attend 
school two more weeks than would otherwise be possible. 
Whispering in itself is not wrong; under certain circum- 
Btances it is delightfully proper. A pupil may whistle in 
the bounds of duty and propriety ; there is 110 offence in the 
nature of the act as such. It is only when the pupil, by 
such means, consents to break the unity of the school that 
Ins act becomes an offence. The offence is in the intention. 
His deed is in his mind. A wrong act, or an offence, is 
a choice against the Spiritual unity of the school. The 
pupil may remain out of school entirely against his will; 
tlien he is spiritually at one with the school. Though 
al isent in body, he is present in mind. Were he present 
in body by foree, willing to be elsewhere, he would still 
be an offender. The pupil who wills to remain out of 
school has done that which, if generalized, would destroy 



160 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

the Organization, and thus defeat its purpose. An offence 
in school is always a choice in a line of action which will 
destroy, or tend to destroy, the school. The end of the 
school cannot be attained if whispering be chosen as a 
practice. The pupil who whispers, in a way, consents to 
that which tends to defeat the purpose of the school. The 
offence is in his mind, and not in his outer deed. And 
this offence does not consist in the mere fact of con- 
senting to whisper in school. One inay whisper in school 
or other organized body with perfect propriety. Suppose 
a political Speaker or a minister in his sermon makes a good 
hit, an auditor might well nudge his neighbor and whisper, 
" That 's good, that 's good ! " And when the fervor of the 
occasion waxes warm the shout of an " Amen " might 
further the interests of the occasion. The evil lies only in 
the consent to do that kind of whispering which if genera- 
lized would defeat, or tend to defeat, the purpose of the 
Organization. It is that whispering which one would 
desire to conceal from the will of the Organization as 
embodied in the ruling officer; it is that consent which 
has its universal setting in a disposition to destroy the 
Organization of which the individual is a part, and for 
whose good the Organization exists. 

Let this distinction be clearly impressed; for a failure 
to distinguish between the pupil's outer deed and his 
inner spirit is a fruitful source of bad management. The 
pupil must purpose, must will, in harmony with the end 
of the school of which he is a part. It is a spiritual 
unity. The pupil is a spiritual rnember, and is in the 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 161 

Spiritual unity, when he desires and purposes the good of 
the whole. He spiritually severs his connection with the 
school when he gives his mind to that which disintegrates 
the school. It thus appears that a pupil, and the pupil 
alone, has the power to sever his connection with the 
school. In the best sense, he alone can suspend hiraself. 
Wycliffe saul that you cannot excommunicate a man from 
church unless he hrst excommunicate himself. That is, 
if a man is a true Christian, and the church vote him out, 
he is not out, but the church is out; and if he is a bat! 
man, and the church still claim him, he and they are 
both out. 

An offence, then, is the action of the will, on the part 
of either pupil or teacher, which negatives the will creating 
and sustaining the school, — the will as embodied in, and 
interpreted by, the teacher and school officers. It is the 
Lndividual's purpose set counter to the whole. This makes 
the application of the law clear. If correction, or punish- 
ment, naturally follows the offence, it is by an action of 
the will in the offender; and if it be proportioned to the 
offence, it must completely reverse the wrong action of 
the will. The pupil who breaks the spiritual unity of the 
school by choosing against it, must reverse that choice 
before he has cancelled his offence. This makes his 
punishment iollow naturally the offence, and proportions 
it to the offence ; for he simply undoes his wrong act, aud 
thereby restores himself to the Institution. The pupil 
alone has the power to sever his connection with the 
school; and he alone has the power to reinstate himself 

U 



162 &CHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

when onoe out. No median ical process can restore the 
pupil whose mincl is at variance witli the Institution ; he 
must reinstate himself by changing his spiritual attitu.de. 

Thus briefly we have suggested how to restore the unity 
when broken : The pupil wJw breaks the unity must, by 
his 01 vn act uf mind, restore it. And the law of punishment 
stated at the outset means just this : the deed being in 
the will, the punishment must be there too; and when the 
will has cancelled its own deed, the punishment is exactly 
proportioned to the offence. Anything beyond this is 
gratuitons on the part of the teacher, and an aggression 
on the rights of the pupil. The idea of retribution is thus 
excluded. 

School punishment is not the application of external 
means; it is the struggle the pupil has with himself in 
order to subordinate himself to the purpose of the school. 
To bring this struggle to pass is the business of the 
teacher; knowing, however, that the work is essentially 
done by the pupil himself. This puts the responsibility 
where it belongs, — with the wrongdoer. He must wrestle 
with his own deed. Whatever pain is suggested by the 
word punishment should be that of mental pain. And 
there is nothing more severe than for the pupil to bring 
himself to take his stand against his former action and 
disposition. 

Application of the Law. — The first practical inf erence 
from this law of punishment is this: The teacher must at 
all times conduct himself as if it were the pupil' s business 
to correct his own deed, and not as if it were the teacher 's 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 163 

business to adjust the ease for him. Teachers talk among 

themsclvcs, and with pupil s, as ii' it were the teacher's 
work to adjust the pupil's mischief. If a boy in the high 
school plays truant, the question is not what the teacher 
is going to do about it, but what is the boy going to do 
about it. Pupils sent front the grades to the Superin- 
tendent for correction suppose that he is to do something 
with theni that will Square the account. In such cases the 
Superintendent should be passive, only witnessing what 
Disposition they make of their own deed. He should aid, 
of course, by whatever suggestions and directions he may 
find helpful; but the pupil must feel that he alone can 
make riglit his own wrong. Nothing done by any one eise 
ean reach the case. This does not mean that the teacher 
is to do nothing, but only suggests the attitude in his 
doing. Just what he is to do may also be inferred from 
the nature of a wrong deed. 

The pupil, to correct his deed, must see its relation to 
the school, and then must decide to act in harmony with 
fehe school. For the sakeof clearness, suppose that a young 
man in College bolts the recitation. By so doing he has 
given his consent to break up the Institution; for he has 
done that which, if done by all, would defeat the purpose 
of the school. His act tends to destroy the Organization. 
Now what is to be done with him? Xo; what is he to do 
with himself? He must see the meaning of his act; and, 
in the light of what he sees, must choose to co-operate to 
the end for which the school is established. This was his 
contract wheu he entered, by the very fact of his entrance. 



164 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

If he sliould remain out, the case is settled, for lie has a 
vight to withdraw. But if he should present himself for 
adraission, he should be informed that he is no longer a 
part of the Institution. At this point the bürden of cor- 
rection rests with the student. If he manifests a desire 
to reinstate himself, he should be asked to explain why a 
pupil should not desert the class. This reason he should 
work out in a clear, logical, and convincing argument. It 
could be made a splendid exercise in demonstrative rea- 
soning, and would be more valuable to the young man 
than to prove the Pythagorean proposition. Suppose he 
says that he cannot see clearly why a student should not 
bolt. In this case he should drop his regulär studies 
and become a specialist on the subject of bolting. He 
should have kind and sympathetic help while struggling 
out of school with this problem; he should be asked to 
present his Solution as soon as he has it worked out; but 
he should not, under any consideration, be permitted to 
work with the school until he is clear on the point of 
bolting. I do not nie an that he should not be permitted 
to remain in the study room while working out his 
problem; but that he should not be included with other 
students in the regulär school work. He should not par- 
ticipate in any of the regulär school exercises; yet his 
presence in the school-room, where he can receive sugges- 
tions, and so that he will not be delayed in making his 
report as soon as he has it ready, is desirable. It would 
be a rash and dangerous mistake to thrust the pupil out 
of the school-room, proclaiming a Suspension or an expul- 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 165 

sion. Although the pupil is really out by his own act, 
he is out of the spiritual unity, and not necessarily oixt-of- 
doors. He might, for a time, at least, be entertained as 
a polite visitor, or assisted as a Student taking a special 
course. 

When the young man shows that he sees his duty 
clearly, that ends the matter, for the present at least. 
Most cases of disorder arise from lack of clear perception 
of the pupil's relation to the school; and the teacher must 
rely on bringing the pupil to a realizing sense of this rela- 
tion to remedy disorder. Besides, it is unsafe to question 
the pupil's motive by making further requisition tili ne- 
cessary. To take a step that might not be needed would 
undo all that had been done, and incite to worse conduct in 
the future. On second offence, the teacher might remark, 
"I thought you understood the matter clearly." If he ad- 
mits tliat it was not so clear as he had supposed, he must 
be put to work out his relations to the school as bef ore ; 
but if he proves that he does understand the matter, then 
the teacher is to take the last step, appealing to the will, 
aud that is to ask him what he is going to do about it. 
If he says that he does not know, he should be asked to 
return and report as soon as he has his mind made up. 
This is a very serious process, and he should be given 
time to make it up well. But usually the first step is the 
most difficult. When the nature of the wrong deed is 
seen clearly, the choice readily follows, except in cases 
of stubbornness. To awaken thought on the question is 
usually sufficient to correct the evil ; but this is not neces- 



166 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

sarily so. The pupil should not be reinstated until he 
affirms his intention to do nothing except that which 
furthers the work of the school. Note this: it is.not 
enough for hini to resolve against truancy; he must 
resolve to preserve nnity. He might pledge hiraself 
against truancy and have a mental reservation to Substi- 
tute some other form of evil. He may thus invent faster 
than the teacher can correct. If pupils flip shot in time 
of school, and this particular offence be corrected, they 
will surely flip beans next ; and this being corrected, they 
will at once resort to paper wads ; and so on ad infinitam. 
The correction to be effective must be universal. The 
particular form of evil is a matter of no consequence; we 
are concerned only with that disposition in the pupil 
which can develop forms of evil infinitely. The particular 
evil which the teacher detects must be taken only as a sign 
of a constitutional trouble which must have constitutional 
treatment. This, and not the form of vice, the teacher 
must remedy. And to this end it matters not what form 
the offence may take; the teacher must press these two 
questions: Do you see? What are you going to do about 
it? But what if he break his resolution? This is no 
proof that he was insincere in making it. He should then 
repeat his former process. It may prove finally that he 
is not honest in his effort. Then the way is clear; for he 
should have no further opportunity to reinstate himself. 
But so long as he is honestly striving, he is gaining 
strength, and should not be excluded from school. It is 
not safe to accuse a pupil of falsehood simply because he 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 167 

fails to carry out his afhrmed intention. Much patieuce 
baust be exercised, and the process with the pupil repeated 
so long as he is gaining strength thereby; nnless the 
welfare of the school is too much endangered, — the loss 
to the school greater than the gain to the pupil. 

In the foregoing case of correction there is more or less 
of authority exercised over the Student, inasmuch as he is 
not permitted to choose freely for- himself in the matter. 
A change in this respect takes place in passing from the 
College to the university student. The university Student 
is supposed to have brought himself under the rule of 
reason, — to be able to think things under universal rela- 
tions, and to regulate conduct by universal principles. He 
practically gives law to the university. He largely deter- 
mines its general policy, and chooses to do as his own 
reason may dictate, within the limits of general morality, 
and his fitness to do certain work, which must be deter- 
mined by others. But whether the student attend a 
particular lecture at a particular time on a particular point 
must be left to him. The teacher holds him only for the 
general outcome of his work, knowing that the student is 
able, or should be able, to best guide himself in the details 
of his progress, free from the minute supervision which 
must be imposed on the more immature student. The 
teacher in the university has only to pronounce judgment on 
the attain ment of the student as to the subject in which the 
teacher gives Instruction. What a university student may, 
properly do would not be proper for the kindergarten 
student, the primary student, or e\'( n the high school or 



168 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

College student. External authority decreases in moving 
upward ; the possible points at which law may be violated 
increase in passing downward. This suggests that one 
thing ought to be made clear to the student from the begin- 
ning, and as rapidly as possible ; namely, the reasonableness 
in obeying authority, — those who interpret and apply the 
law. And further, the change here indicated in passing 
from the kindergarten to the university student, ought to 
suggest to the teacher that, in making corrections, he take 
the development of the pupil into the account. 

The treatment of the College student, as in the case 
supposed, is somewhat simplified by the fact that he is 
supposed to be out from under home control. The case of 
the high school student is different; for parents have 
sornething to do in shaping his school conduct. The steps 
in correction are the same; but there may be cases in 
which it is necessary for the parent to assist the student 
to see his relation to the school, and to strengthen his 
resolution to keep in harmony with the general good. If 
the young lady whispers, she must first show why such 
conduct defeats the purpose of the school, and therein 
is highway robbery of the taxgatherer. If she cannot 
readily work this problem out, she should drop all other 
studies until her deficiency is made up. She has really 
suspended herseif; but it is no use to be harsh, and have 
her pack her books for home. Simply change her work 
for a more important line of investigation, — for sorne- 
thing really practical in life. She may go to church 
some time, and it will be worth everything to all parties 



THE 0RGAN1SM EXECUTING THE LAW. 169 

coucerned for her to know the ground of silence in 
organized assemblies. Her religion depends upon it. 
The teachei niust be patient in giving assistance; and 
when he finds that his suggestions may not be sufficient, 
he should suggest that she ask for help at home; for 
certainly her parents know why silence is the law of the 
school. I am supposing here, for the sake of the Illustra- 
tion, what is not likely to happen; for a high school girl 
can easily niake clear the law against cominunication in 
school. A teacher does not yield his authority in bringing 
parents into such discussions. Nothing is lost; every- 
thing is gained: a clear, mutual understanding all around, 
with the co-operation of the parents. lt is all firm, fair, 
calm, and just dealing. Let us say again to the teacher 
that such a course is no condescension from the throne of 
authority; for the authority is not in the teacher, but in 
the nature of the school and the work to be done. On the 
other hand, the parent has no right to shirk duty, and 
inform the teacher that if he cannot manage the school he 
had better give way to some one who can. The pupil is 
his child, and he is, in a sense, responsible for her con- 
duct, ancl should be glad of any opportunity afforded by 
the teacher to help form it. 

When the reason against communication has been clearly 
worked out, then the case may be dismissed as before, 
confidently expecting improved conduct in the future. If 
the offence should be repeated, and perception of duty 
tested as before, then she is ready for the question, 
"What are you going to do about it?" She may not 



170 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

know at first; but the teacher raust keep cool, and give 
her time to find out. If she cannot decide to desist from 
communication, slie sliould not re-enter school. This is 
Suspension by her own act. I have often been asked what 
the teacher would do if the school board should sustain 
the pupil. I cannot conceive of such a case. What 
school board would ever support the Student who has 
taken his stand in favor of any evil line of action? The 
trouble with the teacher in such cases is that he does not 
bring the matter to the Square issue. Let the teacher ask 
the pupil in the presence of the board what she intends to 
do in respect to the matter under question ; and in the case 
supposed the board cannot say, "Let her communicate; " 
for the fearful results from such an order from the school 
board would be too obvious to need discussion. 

The same steps in punishment for the high school pupil 
are required for the grade below ; the difference is in the 
manner of treatment. The primary pupil can make clear 
the reason against all the general forms of bad conduct. 
Through his instinctive obedience he will do what he 
thinks the teacher desires; yet the teacher must Sub- 
stitute, as rapidly as possible, rational self-control for 
natural obedience. Pupils must be led to see why certain 
conduct is beautiful and good, aside from the will of the 
teacher, and should be exercised in freedom to follow their 
own insight into duty as revealed by their relation to work 
being done. 

The most troublesome cases will appear in the inter- 
mecliate grades. These pupils have passed the stage of 



TUE OKGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 171 

natural obedience, and have not yet arrived at rational 
self-control. They are becoming conscious of will power, 
and are beginn ing to assert their individuality against 
everything eise. This is the young American who knows 
no law but bis own caprice. But tbe process in pimisli- 
ment, except in details, must be tbe same as before de- 
scrihed. He will need more frequent applications of tbe 
process, and a more patient working out of details. 

The teacber who reads these suggestions must not sup- 
pose that tbe law will apply itself; or that all cases of 
bad conduct will be satisfactorily reacbed by it. There 
may be some cases that nothing will correct; and then, 
too, there is a world of difference in the tact of the teacher 
in applying the law. Every case has its peculiarities, 
and the details of correction must shape themselves in the 
process of correction. Let the teacher who finds this law 
to fail him — and there are such — announce the law under 
which he succeeds. 

The two foregoing steps move inevitably either to the 
correction of the pupil, or to his exclusion from school. 
The latter end is to be deplored. But what can be done ? 
Is there no third step to apply to those whom moral suasion 
will not read) ? None of universal application. When the 
pupil's will proves to be firm and resolute against the law 
and order of the school, nothing but the application of 
physical force could be suggested, — some way of reaching 
the mind through the bod}', — corporal punishment in its 
various fornis. But it is obvious at once that such means 
applied to a university studont wonld make matters worse : 



172 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

the College Student could not be persuaded thereby; 
and there is something in the personal pride and dignity of 
the high school pupil that would resent such treatment. 
We cannot speakthus positively in passing from the eighth 
grade downward to the kindergarten ; and yet are we not 
willing to exempt the eighth grade ; and perhaps the seventh 
also ? And below these would it do at all to apply corporal 
punishnient to the large number of refined, sensitive, and 
well-meaning children ? 

It thus appears that corporal punishment is not a uni- 
versal mode of correction. No one believes in its general 
application ; and rnany deny its virtue altogether. Even 
laws have been passed prohibiting the teacher from laying 
hands on the pupil by way of punishnient. Yet there 
aie those who would not spare the rod, lest they spoil 
the child. This may be one of those questions which have 
two sides. Do not those who condemn it altogether 
do so because it is an improper method for the great 
mass of students, and only suitable to the exceptional 
few ; and because, moreover, when it might otherwise be 
proper, it is applied in anger, and so as to injure the body 
of the pupil? For these reasons it is thought much safer 
not to use it at all, thanto do so indiscriminately ; and with 
the further risk of its being used by the high-tempered and 
reckless teacher. In this the law forbidding corporal 
punishment seems well grounded. And yet cannot any one 
point out in some Community a wrong-headed, tough urchin 
who would not be degraded by chastisement with the rod, 
and who would be improved thereby, — one who, all par- 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 173 

ties would agree, must be managed by such method at 
the hauds of somebody ? Are there not pupils whose 
integument is the only avenue to the mainspring of con- 
duct ? Some appeal must be made ; and if no other mo- 
tive to action is available, sensations must be resorted to. 
This, therefore, is not a new mode of punishinent, but only 
one of the methods of appeal rnade necessary because of 
the absence of higher motives to action. The disgrace 
is not in the fact of such punishinent being a painfui 
physical Operation, — if so, amputation of a limb would be 
still more disgrace ful, — but in the degradation implied in 
assuming the absence of anything but aninial sensibilities. 
The pupil must be taken on the plane of his present life, in 
order to elevate him above his present life. Punishinent, as 
well as Instruction, must follow the law of apperception. 

The whole question is this : The instincts, passions, 
and motives of some pupils being as they are, can an 
effective appeal be made without some form of corporal 
application? Can any one show that it is improper under all 
circumstances for a teacher to lay hands on the pupil ? 
Suppose an intoxicated and enraged pupil break boister- 
ously into the school-rooin and assault a pupil against 
whom he is enraged, should not the teacher extemporize 
a police force at once, and exclude him from the room ? A 
teacher can readily imagine a hundred instances in which 
hands must be laid upon the pupil. All of which may be 
most improbable, but it serves to prove that the application 
of physical force is a proper thing in itself. But aside 
from such special outbreaks, are there not cases now and 



174 SGHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

then among young pupils in which a kindly corporal 
chastisement might save society from having to inflict more 
barbarous punishnient later in life ? 

Suppose in all such cases the teacher is forbidden to use 
pbysical persuasion : somebody must do it. Society has yet 
found no way to avoid laying hands on some individuals. 
However squeamish we may be about the matter, the indi- 
vidual must yet have corporal punishment by some author- 
ized agency of social welfare. The moment a school board 
forbids the teacher to lay hands on a pupil by way of pun- 
ishment, the need arises for some one outside the regulär 
teaching force whose duty it is to perform the objection- 
able task. Just now, in one of our largest cities, the board 
are being brought to consider the establishment of "pa- 
rental schools " ; where, it is the presumption, the teacher 
may inflict such punishment as the law permits the parent 
to inflict. Tf the board had kept quiet on the question of 
corporal punishment, trusting to the selection of a proper 
teaching force as the best means of Solution, they would 
not have been brought to the humorous Situation of having 
to legalize the practice of corporal punishment. And if the 
board shirk the duty of providing for pupils who must be 
appealed to on the physical plane, the civil authorities 
must take care of them. If a boy is not decently switched 
in school by the teacher, he may have to be indecently 
cudgelled by the police after expulsion from school. The 
last thing the public school should permit is the with- 
drawal or the expulsion of the pupil from school. The 
welfare of society requires that all children should have a 



TUE QltGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 175 

public school education. Along with the spread of the doc- 
triue of compulsory education — the logical conclusion from 
the doctrine of a free public school supported by the taxa- 
tion of all — must follow the corollary requiring that soine 
means be provided to the füllest extent possible for holding 
the badly-behaved eleinent iu school as long as possible, 
whoever may have to discharge the police duty. 

But if the law and the sentiment against corporal 
punishment are not wholly correct, they will serve to cor- 
rect the outrageous abuses of the once prevailing System by 
limiting corporal punishment to the exceptionally few 
cases to which at most it is applicable ; and by causing 
teachers to be more artful and patient in the use of the 
proper and universal methods of reform. In fact a teacher 
should not expect to use corporal punishment, — should 
even be resolved not to do so, if you wish, — but that he 
may render the most efficient disciplinary Service, no school 
Board should tie bis hands by publicly forbidding its use. 

The applicatiou of the law of unity to punishment 
carries with it many vital consequences. In the effort to 
restore unity through punishment, the teacher too often 
widens the chasm. This arises from the fact that he bears 
himself as if he were the law of the school. He is the 
author and executor of the law; Avhereas the law is in- 
herent in the school, and he, as well as the pupil, is 
imenable to that law. The procedure which has been 
suggested would i'orce on the attention of the pupil the 
fact that the law of the school is given in the purpose and 
nature of the school, and that neither teacher nor board 



176 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

can legislate beyond the law imposed by the end sought. 
The pupil must feel that the teacher regards niatters thus, 
and not that his personality is set against that of the 
pupil. The teacher must step aside and let the pupil 
wrestle with the law which he himself expounds as arisini 
from the work to be done in the school. 

Many of the serious difficulties of managenient arise 
from the bearing and words of the teacher, which pro- 
claim that he is "boss" of the Institution, and has the 
power in his right arm to quell any riot that may occur. 
This attitude will always break the fundamental unity, — 
the unity between teacher and pupils. The two parties 
thus formed each strive with the other for the mastery; 
and from the larger number and the industrious ingenuity 
on the part of the pupils, it is no wonder that the teacher 
is so often out-generaled. If it is a personal fight, why 
not? If the teacher would keep his personality out of the 
question, and aid the pupil to interpret and apply the law 
to which both must render obedience, the pupil could not 
but admire the dignity and firm justice of the System, and 
esteem the teacher who so patiently and emphatically aids 
him to see the ground of the law, and to render obedience 
thereto. There is no reason why a teacher who has 
common sense and sympathy, and who proceeds in a busi- 
ness-like way in correcting the evil-doer, should drive the 
pupil from him. 

Such a procedure would correct the false sense of honor 
among pupils, of which we hear so much. A pupil will 
generally screen his fellow and baffle the teacher in pursuit 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 177 

of an evil-doer. I find that teachers generally consider 
this honorable conduct on the part of the pupil; and as 
things are, I suppose it is so. TVhen the teacher sets his 
personality against the school, who blames the pupil for 
standing by his friend as against another person? When 
the teacher asks hiin to bear witness against a pupil in 
favor of order, he refuses to do so, feeling that his first 
duty is to his boon companion. Teachers claim that it is 
not right for a teacher to ask a pupil to report the bad 
conduct of another; and they must claim this on the 
ground that such a course violates the pupil's proper 
and strong attachment to his fellow-pupil, to serve the 
teacher's personal gain. The teacher has inculcated the 
tliought that the school is his school; and the pupils 
properly think, "Let him take care of it; we shall not 
help him to manage us." If the pupils feel that it is 
their school, and that the teacher is simply to help them 
to make it beautiful and good, the sentiment of honor 
would change from the feeling of honorable conduct 
towards a comrade as against a teacher, to that of honor- 
able conduct towards the school which is for the good of 
all his comrades. 

Now it is not only proper but obligatory on a pupil to 
report anything that tends to destroy the successful work- 
ing of the school. Courts of justice act on this assumption, 
and imprison the man refusing to give the Information. 
If a pupil should see a stranger set fire to the school 
building, the fact would instantly be proclaimed; and the 
same would be expected should the incendiary be a friend 

12 



178 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

of the pupiL He would certainly cleny the incendiary to 
be his friend. What is the difference between tlie pupil's 
setting fire to the building, and doing anything eise that 
would defeat the purpose of the school? A pupil cannot 
wilfully screen any wrong-doer without taking his stand 
against the essential law of the school. It is a choice to 
favor the one against the whole number constituting the 
school, and not against the arbitrary will of the teacher. 
No, it does not encourage tattling, for tattling has malice 
in it. I do not mean that, as a rule, the teacher should 
use this method of Unding out what is going on, but wish 
to emphasize the relation that should ex ist between the 
teacher and the pupil. They should be in such close 
partnership, and on such good terms and fair understand- 
ing with each other, that the teacher can get whatever it 
is necessary for him to know. He should not embarrass 
pupils by asking for evidence, unless it is absolutely 
essential; nor should a pupil be made to feel that it is his 
business to inspect other pupils' conduct, having enough 
to do to attend to his own. The teacher hirnself ought 
not to assume the function of a spy ; he should mingle with 
pupils in an open and business-like way, and not be con- 
tinually exercising his authority miscellaneously. For 
instance, it is not proper, in meeting a pupil on the street^ 
to assail him with questions of conduct, even though the 
pupil may then be playing truant. At such times the pupil 
must be met on the social plane, and the conversation 
should run on general matters of the pupil's interest. 
The teacher should always mingle with pupils on the 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 179 

plane of polite society, and when more rugged dnties 
oome, let there be a tinie and place where matters are dis- 
posed of in a bnsiness-like way. 

It is often urged that a pupil should receive bis corporal 
punishment before tbe scbool, to deter others from offence. 
Tbis is vicions doctrine. If corporal punishment is ever 
proper, it should be given in secret. The teacher then 
maintains the bond of respect between himself and the 
pupil, because the pupil's personality is respected in the 
punishment. 

Another vital eonsequence of the application of the law 
of unity to punishment is the relief from the worry and 
nervous strain of the teacher. The teacher, instead of 
putting himself in conflict with the pupil, puts the pupil in 
contlict with himself. The pupil cannot be helped except 
by self-conflict ; and the teacher who assumes the pupil's 
trouble breaks bis own nerve, and defeats moral discipline 
in the pupil. Tbe principle of correction insisted on 
throughout requires the teacher to fix it up so that the 
pupil must wrestle with bis own deed. Tbis requires skill 
and ingenuity, but no more worry than the Performance 
of any other duty or the Solution of any other dilficult 
problem. It must not be understood that the teacher is 
to take indifferent ease in the matter, — not at all: it 
requires patience, careful study, and wise generalship; 
but this is not worry and vexation at wrong-doing. Can 
there be any reason why a patient, faithful, conscientious 
teacher should have the dear life worried out of bim by a 
sauey boy or girl? Why should a teacher who is faith- 



180 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

ful not be happy, instead of fretting himself because 
of evil-doers? No, it must be fixed so that the pupil 
wrestle with his own deed. Remember the advice which 
one guest gave to another who broke the quiet of the 
night by Walking the floor because his debt was due on 
the morrow without a cent for payment : " Go to bed and 
iet the other fellow walk the floor ! " So should the 
teacher shape up business that he may go to bed and let 
the other fellow walk the floor. 

Rather than worry, is there not some reason for rejoi- 
cing in finding evil manifested? Snppose the boy desire to 
cut the desk, should not the teacher be pleased that the 
Symptom should appear? If the cut is in the boy, let it 
come out, that he may be helped to face his deed now, and 
escape being a vandal when grown up. Let the teacher, 
in calm patience and joy of opportunity, give such sym- 
pathetic counsel as the pupil may need in making the desk 
and himself whole. There should be no excitement; the 
teacher should not throw the pupil and the desk out-of- 
doors, nor disfigure the body of the pupil as a fair offset 
to his disfigurement of the desk. There should be no 
haste; the pupil may well coiisume a week in home con- 
sultation and private meditation between sessions, plan- 
ning the best Solution of the difnculty. And all the time 
the teacher should rejoice in the purifying turmoil; and 
sooner or later the desk and the boy are made sound and 
ready for service. If the boy desires to write his auto- 
graph on the floor in ink, the teacher should be pleased 
to have him do so; the problem of rubbing it off can be 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 181 

made so purifying and tonic to his blood. Such experi- 
ence in erasing sin ought to be one of tlie niost delightful 
studies of the teacher. Why should he have to resort to 
fictioii to find types of people whose conscience is wringing 
a sinful heart, when, with such opportunity, it is his busi- 
ness to conduct the conscience-wringing process. 

After what has been said, the teacher must not suppose 
that the prime art of school management consists in the 
restoration of broken unity, but rather in preserving the 
unity intact from the outset. The best government is not 
that which quells the mob, but that which prevents the 
occurrence of one. The highest ambition of the teacher 
must never be to display power and ingenuity in bringing 
order out of confusion , but in avoiding the confusion by 
perfect adjustment of conditions and skilful instruction. 
This is the ounce of prevention once more. Hence the 
skill in management to which the teacher should aspire is 
that of rendering skill useless. 

This suggests the scientific principle for testin g school 
management, — the test of the beautiful. An object is 
rated beautiful when the moving energy in it is feit not 
to be hindered by the object. A train is beautiful when 
the fovward-moving energy is feit not to be in bondage 
to the train. When a train is feit to be heavily laden, the 
engine puffing and the wheels slipping, awakening in the 
observer a consciousness of strain, it is th ought to be 
ugly. Any instrument or Organization designed to do a 
given work, and stored with energy in that direction, is 



182 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

beautiful when tlie instrument or Organization does not 
limit its own energy. A plant or an animal is beautiful 
when the vital force is triumphant over bodily Organiza- 
tion. The sohool is animated and moved by a school 
energy, which, as we have seen, is ultimately located 
in the pupil. For the school to be beautiful, — well- 
managed, — this energy must not be in bondage to the 
Organization ; but the energy must seem to raove freely to 
the end set up. When there is application of external 
force, the school energy moving out from its centre in the 
pupil is feit to be interfered with, and the school said to 
be ugly. Hence a school is beautiful and well-managed 
when the external force resident in the teacher, or any 
other external agent, is not feit as a factor Controlling the 
energy which ought to move freely from its inherent 
source in the pupil. The right conduct of pupils must 
seem spontaneous under the vital energy of the school, — 
a free, joyous manifestation of the learning life of the 
pupil within the organism. Thus we have clear emphasis 
of the true point of skill in school management ; namely , 
in securing such conditions, andmaking Instruction so vital 
fchat external applications to restore order are rendered 
unnecessary. Such is the ideal to be sought; but because 
of weakness in both teacher and pupil, it cannot be 
realizecl fully. Hence attention must still be given to 
restoration of broken unity; which, too, out of relation 
to school management as a whole, may be reduced to the 
same laws of the beautiful. And the foregoing discussion 
on restoration of brokeu unity is an attempt to so reduce 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 183 

it, in the principle that the pupil moves to self-reforma- 
tion, with the teacher seemingly aside. 

Ethical Training witiiin tue Organism. 

As already pointecl out, the organism has an incidental, 
special value in ethical training, while accomplishing the 
work for which it is directly designed. It niust not be 
inferred from this that the organism has other than ethi- 
cal value. Being designed to stimulate the process of 
growth in the pupil, the entire work of the school is 
ethical. While its direct purpose is that of giving Instruc- 
tion, this must be taken to include not only intellectual 
activities, but emotional and volitional experience as well. 
When a school is properly organized, the emotions and the 
will are as systematically exercised as the intellect; and 
this not by separate purposes and processes, but by the 
organic nature of the teaching act. The term Instruction 
Covers the systematic exercise of all the powers ; and not by 
dift'erent methods, for by virtue of the unity of the mind 
and of the subject-matter, all activities are but phases of 
one life movement for which the school is organized; 
which movement, taken as a whole, being by tension 
between the lower and the higher seif, is ethical. 

But the organism has an inherent secondary ethical 
value in the process of accomplishing the end für which 
it is primarily designed. Unlike most other agencies, the 
material worked upon is a part of the agency. While 
being taught by the school, the pupil is a part of the 



184 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

school. The pupil is educated through his environment; 
and the school instituted to do this work becomes at once 
an immediate and influential part of that environraent. 
So that while the school is organized to give Instruction 
in the broadest sense, it is no sooner put in Operation than 
there appears an ethical value inherent in the life of the 
organism as such, According to the superficial view, econ- 
omy requires that all the teacher's etfort should be devoted 
to Instruction, feeling that energy expended on manage- 
ment, in orderto give Instruction, is wasted. Better consid- 
ered, school management, as a means of cultivating ethical 
virtues, is worth all the time and energy it costs. The 
process of managing must be grasped with that of Instruc- 
tion into a total process of reaching the final end in 
character, and must not be slighted by the feeling that it 
simply conditions Instruction. It is a question of getting 
the total value out of the organism; and this must include 
the ethical training involved in the inner working of the 
organism, as well as the good it objectively seeks. 

We must not suppose, however, that there are two kinds 
of management, — one to secure Instruction, with another 
to secure ethical training. Since all things done right are 
in fundamental harmony, what is best for Instruction is 
most efficient in ethical training. This harmony of ends 
at once appears on recalling the fact that the school 
Organization is based in the unity of the pupil's present 
and future seif, and that Instruction is also based in the 
same unity. The organism through Instruction brings the 
pupil into unity with his better seif; and the pupil's 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 185 

experience within the organism as such — his experience 
incitlent to school Organization — must be an experience of 
unity with Ins better seif. This is the law of unity 
reappearing in a new form, as : — 

Harmony of Means and End. — There must be no con- 
flict beween the end sought by Instruction through the 
organism, and the result of experience in the organism as 
such. The organism must not contradict itself, — must be 
in unity with itself in all its influences to the supreme end 
sought. The purity and integrity of the organism must 
be maintained in the interest of wholesome school experi- 
ence, as against any undue pressure in the interest of 
mere instruction. 

Instruction being the primary purpose of the organism, 
flagrant violations of this law are often committed under 
the stress of making instruction effective, especially when 
the true spirit of instruction is wanting. For instance, 
to force to the highest effort in learning, appeal is quite 
generally made to the pressure of the per cent System. 
Admitting for the moment that this end can thus be 
aecomplished, it is obvious that such a course subverts 
the ethical life of the pupil. The ultimate law of ethics 
requires that self-activity should not contradict itself; 
should not play false with itself; that positively it should 
be eonsistent with itself. When some artifieial Stimulus 
is snbstituted for the natural tension of thought which 
the subjeet, if properly adjusted, will adequately set up, 
the pupil is caused to practice deeeit with his own process 
of thought. Improper relations to problems of thought 



186 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

are just as immoral as improper relations to one's fellows, 
and for tlie same reason; for in botli there is breach of 
integrity in the life proeess. When a pupil works for per 
cents he is working for selfisli ends, and not for a dis- 
interested object which only can have bis true seif in it. 
Just in proportion as a pupil becomes self-conscious 
tbrougb the Stimulus of per cents — becomes interested in 
per cents instead of his subject — to that extent he is in an 
immoral state of mind. 

The use of such means necessarily kills the desire to 
know; which is immoral because killing the soul itself. 
When a teacher, in good faith that the natural proeess of 
learning is its own sufheient reward, begins to instruet 
pupils who have been under the artificial Stimulus of the 
per cent System, he finds them to be indifferent to legiti- 
mate appeals, and ready to affirm that school life is not 
worth living without the usual excitement and strife for 
per cents. What hope for such pupils after the days of 
formal Instruction! The severest criticism that can be 
made on school work is to show that students after grad- 
uation have not a burning desire to pursue a systematic 
course of study and improvement. The use of false in- 
centives is not the only reason for this ; but it is largely 
chargeable to formal methods of instruetion which neces- 
sitate artificial incentives, which further render Instruc- 
tion dead and formal. By this proeess the pupil, if not 
becoming positively averse to study, feels satistied and 
self-suificient; and having no foreign incentive now offered, 
he is under no compulsion to further labor. If study means 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 187 

a contest with ponderable, percentable packages of knowl- 
edge, how play the game when there is no one to estimate 
and umpire? If the school is to determine to a future 
iife of study, the motives appealed to and cultivated in 
school must be the saine as those employed in the natural, 
healthful course of life out of school. 

And, furtherinore, Instruction, while supposed to require 
the percenting System, prohibits the use of that System as 
positively as does the ethical law inherent in the organism. 
The intrusion of a foreign element between the pupil and 
the object of bis thought not only perverts his etbical 
relatiou to the subject he studies, but is an outrage on the 
learning process itself. The niind learns by direct tension 
with the subject, and insulating non-conductors are fatal 
to the process. The use of per cents as a means of instruc- 
tion shows either that the teacher has no faith in the 
passion of the niind for knowledge, and in tbe poAver of 
the subject to gratify such passion; or it is a confession of 
lack of skill in so adjusting one to the other as to utilize 
the natural and most powerful motive in study. When 
teaching is poorest, the need for per cents is feit to be 
greatest, and the most thoroughly and damagingly are 
they used. It is not at all stränge that, in the childhood 
of the profession, before the teacher had found the centre 
of his sphere in the unity of pupil and subject-matter, 
he should resort to mechanical leverage to force the In- 
struction which bis crude art oould not otherwise secure. 
Nothing to fchis end has seemed so practica! and powerful 
as tbe per cent systeni; and so universally and thoroughly 



188 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

has it been used, that it lias assumed the röle of a legiti- 
mate and necessary function. Let those who think that 
pupils must have other motives to study than the desire 
to learri, observe the zest with which the unperverted 
and wisely gnided kindergarten or primary pupil labors. 
Observation proves that the argument for the use of arti- 
.ficial incentives has no force except in case of perverted 
appetite for knowledge ; and certainly one should not wish 
to argue for the continuance of the System which so 
perverted the appetite as to make the System necessary. 
Even after suffering long abuse of the System, let the 
mind of the pupil be brought into living touch with the 
thing he studies, and there is instant regeneration, and 
bounding forth with alacrity to further explorations. No, 
it is faith in the exhilarating touch of the mind with 
living truth that saves both teacher and pupil from the 
quackery of superficial and temporizing devices as against 
natural and constitutional procedure. 

The foregoing criticism does not apply to the use of 
per cent records for the convenience of teachers; yet it 
must be remembered that nothing lies like figures when 
used to indicate mental attainments. Especially so when 
per cents are used as motives to study, and become an object 
of attainment by the teacher. The work thus assumes a 
formal character, and the higher the per cent the more 
questionable the qualification. The more vigorous, origi- 
nal, and inquisitive the mind, the less capable and willing 
is it to do routine, percentable work. A good class will 
make a poor record when examined by a mechanical 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 189 

routine teacher; while under the same coiiditions a poor 
class will make a good record. Class-honor men are not 
the men who take tlie honors in the real confliet of life. 
It is not the highest ortler of talent that consents to work 
for artificial ends by percentable products, nor such talent 
as most likely to succeed under such conditions. For this 
reason the comparative attainment of pupils, either in the 
same class or in different schools, cannot be ascertained 
by a study of per cent records. Before per cents can reveal 
the truth, it must be known how pupils have been taught, 
the kind of questions by which they have been testet!, and 
the kind of teacher who makes the estimate. But let the 
teacher make the most of this unreliable arithmetic, so 
that it never be made the motive to study. 

And in the same way examinations have their use and 
abuse. They may perhaps be properly used to ascertain 
the condition of a pupil's mind as a basis of Instruction, 
but never as an impending danger to the careless and easy- 
going pupil. Yet the neetl of the examination as a test of 
knowledge is greatly overestimated. It is stränge if tlie 
teacher who has taught the class does not, in so tloing, 
learn their mental condition. Certainly the written recita- 
tion and the preparation of papers out of reeitation tinie 
are an exact, searching, and sufficient test; all of which the 
natural course of Instruction requires. If it be desirable 
to call this an examination, then let it be admitted that 
examinations are proper for purposes of Instruction. 
After a class is well taught under normal conditions, it 
woultl be a serious confession on the part of the teacher 



190 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

to claim that an examin ation is needed to ascertain the 
condition of pupils' minds touching the subject taught. 

Ifc seems that College authorities have found no other 
Solution of the distressing examination problem than that 
oi' surveillance or student-honor, as appears from an article 
by Professor Stevens in the February "Forum" of '95. 
It seems not to have occurred to them that the examina- 
tion might formally disappear in the regulär and matter- 
of-course daily work, and thus avoid its objectionable 
f eature. When an examination has any other than an educa- 
tive value, which reduces it to regulär class work, it is the 
subtlest irony to speak of putting pupils on their honor; 
the fact of the examination is the challenge of honor, and 
is only a more refined surveillance, while purporting to be 
its opposite. The entrance examination might seem to be 
an exception to all this, since there has been no recitation 
to test qualification. But if the professor should state 
to the student Avhat qualification s are necessary for sue- 
cessful work in the department, the rest may be left 
with the student ; for he undertakes the work at his own 
peril, under the Coming and all-sufficient test of ability to 
carry the class work. Students who would desire to de- 
ceive in this matter are too rare to justify imposing rules 
on the mass, and such are sure to be caught in due course 
of Instruction. 

But suppose examinations are needed: they cannot be 
relied on as auything more than a very inaccurate and 
partial test. This fact is well emphasized by Fitch. 
" JSTevertheless we have to postulate here that there are 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 191 

certain very valuable qualities which are not revealed in 
a written examination, and whicli tlie habit of exclusively 
relying on such examination does not encourage. Except 
in so far as diligence and obedience are concerned, exami- 
nations do bnt little to test moral qualities, or active 
power. They do not teil yon whether tlie action of the 
niind has been rapid or sluggish, nor liow far the pupil 
has been inflnenced by a sense of duty or by strong 
interest in his work. Still less do they help to gauge 
those attributes on which success and honor in life so 
much depend, — sympathy with human beings, deference 
for superiors, the power of work in g with and influencing 
others, address, flexibility, manner. Let us once for all 
acknowledge that for either educational purposes, or for 
testing or selection, with a view to the requirements of a 
university or of the public Service, the best exarainations 
do not test the whole man, but leave some important ele- 
ment of character to be ascertained by other means; and we 
havc still to ask, within what limits are examinations valu- 
able. and how we can get the maximum of good out of them." 
Be this as it may, tliere can be no question of the evil 
effects of the examination System as a means of enforcing 
industry and diligent perseverance in well-doing. The 
mcthod of examination by which the Student is induced 
to risk all on the last fearful moment, is viciousand deinor- 
alizing in the extreme; and for such a test there can be 
no apology, except that by a kind of military enforcement 
ol' work, study can be secured which clumsy teaching fails 
to realize. Some abnormal condition of things, such as 



192 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

large, diverse membership of elasses, may suggest the 
need of testing by formal exarninations; but certainly in 
a well-ordered System no such necessity can arise. Then 
sball we have exarninations? Yes, continnally. How? 
As a regulär organic part of the Instruction, both oral and 
written; and as a matter of course, pupils being uncon- 
scious that anytbing new or unusual is bappening. Cer- 
tainly never with the idea of external pressure to study, 
entailing fear, dread, and nervous strahl, — the very ele- 
ments which have perpetuated the system. The matter 
of breaking health through nervous strain is not an insig- 
nificant part of the account ; but still worse is the moral 
strain, often too great to be borne. How frequently in 
College work, where there is the most diligent detective 
practice on the part of the professor, do we hear the 
student chuckle at his exultant story of superior general- 
ship in the war where cheating and lying are fair ! 

But all this is gradually passing, and the danger lies 
in a more subtle form of evil. This is the same as that 
pointed out in speaking of per cents, — namely, the dis- 
turbance of the natural and healthful tension of the mind 
with the world of life and thought which it is to master. 
Tt is the intrusion of foreign elements between the pupil's 
present real seif and his future ideal seif, as found in the 
world he is to study. If the elements of anxiety, fear, 
the venturing of chances, and the temptation to deception 
could be eliminated, and one still think of the examination 
as a motive, it could not be used without turning the pupil 
back upon himself; whereas the motive and the method 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 193 

of the pupil's work must bring self-forgetful activity on 
the subject for consideration. Self-realization is by the 
process of self-sacrifice. Self-activity is the striving to 
be the other seif, which is the thought and spirit of the 
woild objective to the seif. This is the organic unity of 
consciousness which must be kept inviolate. Self-activity 
must not be taught to practice deceit; the object acted on 
must be the motive in the action. The teacher cannot use 
the examination as a motive to study without breaking 
faith with the mind's craving for unity with the world 
about it; nor without weakening the tension for that 
unity. The hungering and thirsting of the soul for the 
righteous spirit of the world is the supreme ethical virtue; 
and it is this desire in some form to which every teaching 
act must appeal for its motive. To make any other appeal 
is a perversion of the ethical relation of the pupil to the 
world in which he lives. 

All other artificial stimulants are to be disposed of by 
the same argument as that used against per cents and 
examinations. When a prize is offered the assumption is 
that the subject of study has not in itself sufficient induce- 
ment to its study; or that the teacher lacks skill in bring- 
ing the subject into stimulating touch with the mind of 
the learner. Froperly treated, the subject is its own 
prize; and to Substitute any other is a Subversion of the 
true method and motive in learning. The prizes so gener- 
ously offered to College students by well-meaning people, 
and distributed from the platform at commencements, are 
antagonistic to the spirit of true education. It cultivates a 

13 



i94 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

longing and vain striving for ignoble things; and this in 
an Institution pledged to liberal culture and the higher lue 
of thought and sentiment. Emulation, a nmch-praised 
motive to study, is likewise prohibited both on ethical 
grounds and by the true method of learning. The pupil 
has only so much of total energy to expend on the subject 
before him; and why should some fellow get in the way 
and consume a part of that energy? The pupil has all he 
can do to rise above himself; and the Standard of his 
achievement should not be located in another for the sake 
of excelling the other. He certainly should make a 
legitimate nse of the other as a Standard for himself; but 
rivalry, which has in it the desire to excel another for the 
sake of excelling him, needs to be refined out of the pupil 
rather than cultivated in him. Self-emulation is the only 
worthy emulation. Any other cultivates 

" The low desire, the base design, 
That makes auother's virtues less ; " 
and also 

" The strife for triumph more than truth." 

The use of such a motive may secure, through strife and 
contentions, a great display of animation and effort; but 
these are only feverish, fitful spasms from a disorder in 
the school organism, and not to be taken for genuine zeal 
and aspiration. 

Thus always the ethical character of the organism is 
tested in the support given to the unity of the pupil with 
himself in the subject he studies. It must contain no 
element which Stands counter to self-realization. What- 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 195 

ever he the pressure to make Instruction effective, the 
organism must preserve its integrity, so as to secure 
wholesome liviiig within it while tlie end of Instruction is 
being souglit. It permits no appeal to low desires and 
base motives; allows no insult to the pupil's rational 
desire for knowledge, nor to the world of life and reason 
which are sufticient to gratify that desire. In order to the 
growth and health of the body, the appropriate activities 
are prompted by the unerring desire for food, air, warmth, 
light, and action. ls it nut fair to assume that the growth 
of the niind has been equally well insured by some inipulse 
which prompts to acts appropriate to its growth? The 
abiding passion of the soul is for knowledge, and all the 
teacher can pröperly do is to take this fact fairly and at 
its worth. This passion he niay stimulate, make definite, 
and attach to the proper objects ; but he cannot introduce 
a Substitute without weakenmg the life-giving connection 
between the pupil learning and the object being learned. 
This duty of appeal to proper motives is well enforced by 
Thomas Davidson in the "Forum," on "The Ideal Educa- 
tion of an American Boy." 

•• In all his teachings, moreover, he [the tutor] will take 
che utmost care never to let his pupils think that they 
are studying merelv in order to pass an examination, but 
always tu make them feel that the only end of study is 
complete autonomous manhood. He will do his best to 
sliow them how, and in what degree, each study contrib- 
utes to this end, so that they may never feel, as so niany 
boys do at present, that they are studying inerely because 



196 SGHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

some one eise wishes them to clo so, and consequently, that 
their work is a slavish, unprofitable task. A boy who 
does not feel that every hour he spends in study is spent 
for tlie sake of the highest end he knows and desires, is in 
an immoral frame of mind, and by no means on the way 
toward moral autonomy. The greatest triumph as a tntor 
is to make his pnpils feel that what he requires of them is 
the very best thing they coulcl be doing. If he fails in 
this, he has virtually failed altogther; for every honr that 
a self-conscious being spends without feeling that it is 
bringing him nearer to the goal of his aspirations is an 
hour slavishly and unrighteously wasted." 

Influence of Social Combination. — Having guarded the 
purity and integrity of the organism by rejecting all 
harmful agencies, it is free to enter into positive ethical 
training. School life is the transition from the faraily to 
the larger complex social life of the world. In the pupil's 
little school world he is trained to the forms and habits of 
life which fit him for the larger social world of which he 
must soon be a member. 

Society is infinitely complex, yet a closely integrated 
whole; and the fundamental law of social life requires that 
the individual conduct himself so as to preserve intact the 
social whole : not in a merely negative sense, but in that 
of active co-operation to worthy achievements of the race. 
The great obstacle to proper social conduct is the inability 
of the individual to grasp adequately the bewildering 
complexity of society into a closely integrated System of 
human effort for personal welfare. Concrete experience 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 197 

in family life, the most elementary social unit, develops 
in the child the germ of the organic conception, which is 
to be finall}' expanded, by the school and other agencies, 
into a comprehension of the complex life of the social 
whole. In school, which carries over into itself much of 
the family spirit, this germ of social conception becomes 
definite and complex through the more varied and exacting 
requirements of school life. The school, as the pupil 
meets it, is a concrete, comprehensible social World, — 
an object both to be observed by him and of which he is 
a living part; and, if properly managed, becomes a most 
potent infiuence in forming proper habits and sentiments 
of social life. 

Whatever training the school gives preparatory to social 
life, is based on the fact that each pupil pursues his work 
in association with others. This fact is the basis for a 
criticism frequently made against public school education, 
— namely, that of evil associations and corrupting influ- 
ences of vicious pupils. But this has the couuter-balan- 
cing benefit of bringing the evil under the infiuence of the 
good; and from the Standpoint of the whole the Standard 
of virtue may not be lowered, leaving ground for cora- 
plaint only with those parents whose children are, or are 
thought to be, above the average. However this may be, 
the school society, under proper regulations, is certainly 
better than what the child will probably be thrown into 
as he approaclies maturity. With a well-regulated System, 
and proper vigilance on the part of the teacher, the social 
tone of the school may be made elevating even to the 



198 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

average pupil. Being alarmed at certain specific forms 
of contagious vice, we are too prone to leave out of the 
account contagious forms of virtue, as well as the general 
toning influences of a well-ordered school. At any rate 
the school is not at fault, for the life of the school as a 
whole is as good as the material sent to it, and out of 
which it is made. All that need be urged upon the school 
as an Institution is that it be so thoroughly organized and 
managed to the end of higher life and conduct, as to be 
above the general Standard of social life, in which the 
pupil, while out of school, would probably be rnoving. 

People must come in touch; it is impossible to save by 
secluding and stowing away in pure corners of the earth. 
To hide from the world tili evil disappears is a poor way 
to attain to the crowning glory of virtue, — the overcom- 
ing of evil. Holiness is not the absence of evil, but the 
victory over it. A school may be so managed as to 
corrupt morals and manners, and to f oster a sense of dis- 
order, injustice, and anarchy; but this only suggests a 
potency for good in the opposite direction, both of which 
facts make doubly strong the necessity for the teacher 
keeping clearly in mind the leading social virtues which 
a well-managed school cultivates. 

The first of these virtues, which arises from the mere 
fact of school association, is that of : — 

Politeness. — Society, in its populär sense, is only a 
general expression for the recognized kinship and Com- 
munity of life among individuals. In some degree the 
world as a whole is a sociable world; for man recognizes 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 199 

man in every form of human life, and expresses the recog- 
nition in customary social forms. In no Situation in life 
is man relieved from acknowleclging that every other " is 
a man for a' that." Thus society, in its most intangible 
unity, is bound togetlier by tlie universal sentiment of 
Community of life in the race. 

This mere feeling of unity finds expression in the social 
amenities and courtesies of life. Such recognition, not 
the outer form butthe inner spirit, is true politeness. 
This is a chief social trait, because it is that quality of 
one's actions which acknowledges the ideal, potential 
seif in another; and from which arises the unity of the 
social whole. Impoliteness is the treating and greeting 
of another by reference to his shortcomings; and the true 
test of politeness is found in the adjustment of actions to 
tlie ideal and potential when these are obscured by vice 
and degradation. It is easy enough to be polite to 
kings and queens, — to real kings and queens in Spiritual 
virtues; but true politeness discerns the king and queen 
in every one, — even in the loathsome leper begging before 
the castle gate of a knight-errant. 

There is a vast difference between the true recognition 
of the ideal worth of another as man, and tlie mere formal 
and conventional use of politeness; yet the two are one in 
being based on tlie acceptance of the brotherhood of man. 
In any form, politeness is a means of maintaining social 
unity. lmagine each speaking and acting with reference 
to the real character of his assoeiates, and at once society is 
dissolved intö atoms — perhaps withbruises and bloodshed. 



2ÖÖ SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

To test one's act as to politeness, it need only be asked 
whether it break the unity of good feeling binding to- 
gether the social whole. 

For instance, if one sliould meet an enemy in a social 
gathering, it would be impolite to treat him there as an 
enemy, because such conduct would break the unity and 
check the flow of social life. It is impolite to read a 
newspaper in church while the pastor is preaching, 
because he is thus treated as an unworthy pastor, and the 
congregational unity disturbed. 

Politeness in school is only a phase of the law of 
organic unity in the school. Pupils must meet on a 
common plane, where each is forced to recognize the equal 
worth of others, in whatever uninviting guise it may 
appear. A dignified and well-toned System of manage- 
ment necessarily maintains strict practice of polite conduct 
as an indispensable means to the integrity of the organism. 
Thus the teacher does not need to turn aside to enforce 
polite conduct, but secures such conduct in due course of 
management itself. Whatever the teacher may do by way 
of instruction in the theory and practice of politeness 
should be done ; but the practice of politeness is inherent 
in the organism itself. And whatever definite instruction 
may be desired on the subject, no better opportunity can 
be found than that furnished by the concrete situations of 
school life. As the pupil in all cases of discipline must 
reason out how certain acts destroy the school, so here he 
should see specifically how he disorganizes the school by 
impolite conduct. And then such conduct has still greater 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 201 

Claims upon the individual on his own account; which 
shoulcl become so clear to him as to appeal to his sense of 
ideal worth, as well as to his respeet for the ideal worth 
of another, and the desire for the welfare of the school as 
a whole. The requirement of politeness put upon the 
teacher in maintaining unity in the class reciting has 
already been indieated. This may now be taken as a 
general principle of securing unity in any form whatever. 
By the nature of the teacher's relation to his pupil, he 
must address himself to the ideal in the pupil. When the 
teacher, in an angry moment, berates the pupil for his 
shorteomings, he subverts the very foundations of the 
school. The weakness of a pupil can never be made the 
means of attack without risking disorganization. At all 
times the teacher must see the lady or the gentleman in 
his pupil, even when brought to the necessity of dealing 
sternly with misdemeanors. The school is still a phase 
of polite society, and the teacher must never violate social 
proprieties because occupying a position of authority. 
However wayward a pupil may be, he must receive the 
same social attention and courtesies as a perfect lady or 
gentleman. Teachers, because they have not realizecl ideal 
politeness, may have to make a little effort to treat the 
uncouth and saucy boy with the same attention and 
courtesy as the well-bred and attractive one; but the law 
of unity permits nothing less; and in this the teacher 
finds, as does the pupil, rugged discipline in polite 
conduct. 

On the general basis of sociable relations, the school 



202 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

and society pass into more defmite organic character by 
the parts assuming orderly arrangement with reference to 
werk to be aecomplished. This new fact requires of the 
social unit the ethical sense and habit of : — 

Order. — The first condition to active co-operation of 
the parts of a mechanism or organism is that the parts be 
orderly disposed with reference to each other, — that each 
be in its proper place at the proper time. The essential 
element in order is that of punctuality, — the observance 
of time and place conditions of co-operation. The organ 
must be where it is needed when it is needed, or it is use- 
less; therefore, disorcler is disOrganization. 

The law of order involves the law of silence; for the 
individual must not simply be in body at the right time 
in the right place, but must be there in spirit also. His 
mind must be abstracted from everything but the work in 
hand; and this is the inward silence which produces the 
outward silence. Order requires attention to a given 
matter at the right time and place. A pupil is in order 
when his mind is at the point of doing the thing next to 
be done. 

The school organism cannot move forward without plac- 
ing the pupil under the strict requirement of order; hence, 
it again appears that the teacher need not turn aside to 
eultivate the ethical virtne in question,but must simply 
enforce as usual the law of unity inherent in the organism. 
Thus may be eultivated the habit of order and the feeling 
of Obligation to the law, which are necessary to maintain 
Unity in any phase of social Organization. Social co- 



THE ORÜANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 203 

Operation is impossible in any form without obedience to 
the law of Order; and as civilization advances, and social 
phenomena become more complex, the more exacting is 
the reqnirenient of the law. A railroad System wonld be 
instantly paralyzed by a failure of operatives to conform 
to the schedule; and the business of the whole conntry 
wonld be destroyed by absolute uncertainty as to the time 
and place of transactions. And such is the general neces- 
sity for order running through every phase of organic life; 
and also manifested with such mathematical precision in 
the world of physical law. The parts of the solar System 
are always in place and at their appointed task. And so 
should it be with every social organ; but such Organs 
work by capricious will instead of by mathematical law, 
and must be trained to observe the first law of heaven. 
With such necessity of the moral virtue of order, and with 
such definite requirements made by the law of the school 
on that virtue, the school should be managed with the 
conscious purpose of forming habits of order, and of culti- 
vating a quick sense of Obligation to the requirements of 
the law. 

The next social virtue arising alter order, and which the 
school by its inherent structure cultivates, is that of : — 

Truthfulness. — Truthfulness is essential not only to the 
integrity — the unbrokenness — of the individual, but to 
the integrity of an Institution. The co-operative unity of 
the parts already orderly arranged is maintained through 
sonic form of communicating medium. Now truthfulness, 
including all forma of fair and honest dealing, is that 



204 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

quality in the communicating medium by which each 
knows the real intent of the other. Truthfulness is the 
transparency of the communicating medium. If this 
medium diffuses or refracts the real intention of the 
communicator, the recipient is thrown off the track, and 
his effort to join in the thought and work of the other 
defeated. Truthfulness in word or act brings two or more 
minds into unity; but lying and deceit sunder yet more 
widely, while pretending the opposite. Thus unity of 
thought and harmony of action rest, after order, on the 
transparency of the social medium of communication. 
Lying not only antagonizes truth, but cannot harmonize 
with itself; hence liars must have good memories. Any 
truth fits every other; while any lie fits no other, eise it 
would be true to the lie it fits. Thus lying is the absolute 
destruction of organic unity. 

Hence, truthfulness in school, especially between teacher 
and pupils, is an absolute requirement of the law of unity 
in school management. For instance, if the pupil in any 
way deceive the teacher as to what he knows about the 
subject of Instruction, he so far dissolves Organization 
with the teacher; and should the teacher cause the pupil 
to practice self-deception as to his real mental condition, 
the result is the same, with change of criminals. The 
true attitude of the pupil will reveal his whole mind to 
the teacher, especially his weakness, so that the teacher 
may render the needed assistance. But the teacher 
generally so puts the pressure on the Student by threats, 
examinations, marks, prizes, and honors, that he is not 



THE OKGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 205 

only tempted to conceal his weakness, but fco make a false 
show of knowledge. This is another root of the evil dis- 
cussed uuder false incentives, which appears now as a 
thoroughly disorganizing element at the vital centre of the 
school, — unity of teacher and pupil. This suggests the 
care the teacher shouhl exercise in keeping the raind of 
the pupil open as to its vital needs, both in order to secure 
the focal unity of the school and to avoid the cultivation 
of a mosfc subtle form of deception, blighting to every 
phase of social life. But in every phase of school experi- 
ence the teacher musfc bring the pupil to the practice of 
fcruthf ulness ; and he will not lack for opportunity to lead 
the pupil to discover the disorganizing character of decep- 
lion and falsehood. The school is inherently true and 
honest; and the cultivation of these virtuos requires only 
the rigid enforcement of its fundamental law. 

The individuals of society, bound together by the mere 
feeling of Community of life, and having assumed definite 
and orderly arrangement with reference to each other in 
the work to be done; and further, given to truthf ulness in 
communication, the welfare of the school and of society 
requires yet another attribute, that of: — 

Tndvstry. — The individual, when organized into a Sys- 
tem of work, must give steady attention to that Avork. 
The wheels of a machine cannot stop without stopping the 
machine; idleness is a social disorganizer, and not only 
because of the absence of labor, but because the dead, 
disjointed raaterial becomes a bürden to the social body. 
Whether vieWed from the individual or social Standpoint, 



206 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

idleness is immoral, — froni the individual standpoint, 
because activity is the law of bis being; from tbe social, 
because the wbole is disintegrated when the activity of 
its members ceases. Industry, from the social point of 
view, is the tension of the activity of the individual with 
the movement of the whole. Industry is the very life and 
movement of any social Organization; hence, idleness on 
the part of the teacher or pupils destroys the school to 
the extent of the idleness; and complete idleness is com- 
plete destruction. It is needless to urge that a school 
thoroughly organized and managed, with its regulär, exact, 
and punctual requirement in performance of duty, is a 
most powerful means of bringing the pupil into the habit 
and spirit of industrial life. It is in the school that the 
pupil passes from capricious play to systematic and con- 
tinuous effort to some end beyond that of mere activity 
itself. To make this transition from play to work effec- 
tive, the work must carry with it the joy of play. In the 
highest art of labor, and in the most effective social 
industry, work has a reward in the activity itself. Work 
to the artist workman is as play to the child: in both 
there is the joy of free activity, — in the former the result, 
besides the activity, is a useful end; in the latter, there 
is no end beyond the activity itself. The philosophy of 
the kindergarten games and gifts is in the fact of trans- 
forming play into work, while still maintaining the reward 
of the activity in the activity itself. The public school, 
artfully managed, is the very Institution to supply to 
society members who are not simply industrious by force 



THE ORGAXISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 207 

bf oonviction and habit, but who liave the joy of industry 
in the heart, — members who are free men in the love 
of wholesome labor, rather than slaves to the inexorable 
requirements of the hard industrial world. 

" Work thou for pleasure , paiut, or sing, or carve 
The thiug tliuu lovest, though tlie body starre. 
Who vrorks for glory raisses oft the goal ; 
Who vvorks for inouey carves his very soul. 
Work for the work's sake, theu ; and it may be, 
That these thiugs sliall be atlded unto thee. " 

In the pursuits of life under the law of industry, one 
individual will traverse the path of another, and come in 
conrlict with hiin, unless restrained by a proper sense of 
the rights of others. Thus, the integrity and weif are of 
society further requires the cultivation of the restraining 
sense of : — 

Justice. — As defined by Herbert Spencer, justice is the 
equal freedom of action, or, to put it in his own words, 
as found in Ins ''Social Statics," in whieh, and also in his 
"Principles of Ethics," he has forcibly elaborated the 
doctrine: "Every man Las freedom to do as he wills, pro- 
vided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other 
man." In absence of the social relation of justice, neither 
the school nor any other Institution, nor society as a 
whole, can maintain its organic life. Absolute injustice 
may readily be Been to be absolute disorganization. Pupils 
cannot invade the rights of each other, nor teacher and 
pupils make mutual invasions, without dissolution of the 
organism to the extent of the invasion. Hence, justice 
in the school is only another phase of the law of unity; 



208 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

and to train pupils into the habit and sentiment of justice, 
the teacher need only to manage the scliool thoroughly 
with reference to its primary law. 

How the pupil is thus required to practice justice is 
quite obvious. For instance, in order that class work may 
proceed, each pupil in the class must consider the rights 
of every other in the class, and subordinate his own 
caprices and desires to their good. In every case of self- 
regulation the welfare of the class is consulted, and the 
pupil must bring himself into line with that welfare. He 
puts the individual seif down for the general good. And 
so it must be with reference to the school as a whole; the 
individual has many desires which are crossed by the 
requirements of the school as a whole. At every turn he 
must stop to consider what the good of the whole in the 
interests of its members requires of him. To that he 
must render obedience. This is a universal form of 
morality, — the putting down of an individual preference 
for a general good. Such is the requirement of virtuous 
citizenship. Patriotism — justice intensified — is the feel- 
ing which enables one to sacrifice seif for the good of 
country and humanity. We have much to say about 
training for citizenship, and devise means through the 
study of civics and history to prepare for that duty. 
But no means ever devised is rnore potent than an efficient 
System of school management. Under this the pupil has 
the Citizen 's experience, — lives a real citizen's life. He 
is required to think his own conduct as a member of the 
little school- world, and is thus trained into citizenship 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING TUE LAW. 209 

habit. In the other way he merely theorizes about 
citizenship. It is not more or different studies needed in 
school in order to cultivate tliis virtue, but a more efficient 
System of school management. Civics in the blood is 
more vital than civics in the head. Especially unpromis- 
ing is the newest method of teaching patriotisin by the 
galvanic process of ritualism. Nothing but patriotic 
experience through the concrete situations of life can call 
forth the desired virtue. Pretence and formalism are 
death ; while the altruistic demands made on the pupil in 
due course of a well-regulated school life are potent and 
healthful influences in the cultivation of a patriotic spirit. 

And thus we have already passed from justice to the 
climax of school and social virtue, that of : — 

Altruism. — Under this sentiment the individual does 
more than simply avoid interference with the rights of 
others, and now positively seeks their good. This, there- 
fore, is the completely unifying social virtue. If all were 
dominated by an altruistic spirit, Society would move for- 
ward as one harmonious whole. Hence, this is the virtue 
which in common thought and literature is exalted above 
every other; it is the chief glory of Hiin who went about 
doing good. 

At the outset we found tliis to be the necessary attitude 
of the teacher towards bis pupils ; and without the same 
feeling of mutual helpfulness among pupils, school life 
wonld be dreary and incomplete. The kindergarten 
properly makes much of this spirit, and it is claimed that 
such is the fundamental basis of all school work. This 

14 



210 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

may well be accepted if we expand the idea of altruism 
to include all forms of self-forgetfulness in the spirit of 
the world lying objective to the pupil. In this larger 
sense altruism is the last word either in method of thought 
or of action. The highest principle of Instruction already 
advocated in "The Philosophy of Teaching," and now 
presented in conclusion as the truest principle of manage- 
ment, is that of immediate self-forgetfulness in the envi- 
ronment of truth and life in which the pupil lives and 
moves and has his being. 

The highest outcome of such an appeal to altruistic con- 
sciousness in both Instruction and management is a realiz- 
ing sense of the rational order of the universe; that there 
is reason and law above the individual to which he must 
bow assent, if he would realize his destiny. The school, 
beginning with the little concrete world immediately 
about the pupil, including the school itself, gradually 
opens his eyes to the fact that his own highest good is 
to be at one with the divine order of things. Gradually, 
and by long experience, it dawns upon him that the reason 
in the larger world about him is his reason, and that he 
must conform to this reason if he would achieve the 
highest good. He comes finally by habit and insight to 
seek the divine order of the world to make it his order. 

And thus we are reminded that altruism is not an end, 
but only a method of thought and action; that while it is 
more blessed to give than to receive, one always receives 
more than he gives. We speak of cultivating the social 
virtues for the good of society; but society is an empty 



THE OKGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 211 

ibstraction apart from tlie concrete lives of the indi- 
viduals. A social virtue is, after all, a personal and 
private virtue. Kindness, gentleness, mercy, and love 
liave more worth to the subject than to the object of them. 
But these have no meaning except in attachment to others; 
and the only method of cultivating them is through the 
immediate consciousness of their object and not their sub- 
ject. The practice of altruism returus as personal worth 
in some form, eise why be altruistic, if human worth is 
the goal of education? The proximate end is certainly 
another person or another truth; but the teacher, in train- 
ing to practica! knowledge and social virtues, should not 
forget Kaut's maxim: "So act as to consider every man 
as an end in himself, and never as a means only." The 
pupil must lose his life, but always in order to find it. 
Through cöicient school management the pupil is required 
to deny himself, to sacrifice himself, for the good of others 
and the Institution as a wnole; but this is ouly his proper 
subjeetive diseipline, and the school as a whole is only 
his own rational nature, at first unrecognized. So while 
he, out of respect to others and devotion to the school, 
practises politeness, order, truthfulness, industry, justice, 
and love, his own life is being diseiplined and enriched 
by these virtues. All high achieveinent for seif, as well 
as for humanity, comes through a self-forgetful devotion 
to a universal objeetive good; yet the ultimate test of 
ethical training is its personal, private, and subjeetive 
value. The ultimate test for management is the samc as 
that already set up for instruetion in the " Thilosophy of 



212 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

Teaching," — namely, the self-realization of the indi- 
vidual, which is best explained by the words, rational 
freedom, or the power to choose and live in the highest 
good. Hence, the ultimate ethical question for school 
management is, how does the securing of unity to the end 
of instruction discipline to : — 

Rational Freedom. — The law of the school requires 
each pupil to bring hirnself into nnity with the Organiza- 
tion, and thus he must limit his customary, free, irre- 
sponsible conduct; must harmonize his actions with others, 
and direct his effort to serious worthy attainment. 

When the ehild enters school, his actions are chiefly 
controlled by caprice. He has not been trained to sub- 
ordinate his likes and his dislikes to the attainment of a 
rational object. In school for the first time, perhaps, he 
is held to systematic effort to attain some good beyond his 
immediate desires. By the nature of the school Organiza- 
tion he is compelled to limit hirnself to a given task, at a 
given time and place. No phase of school work is more 
beautiful, or more suggestive of educative power, than a 
school-room of children brought into the unity of an 
industrious effort to attain some worthy object. The very 
nature of the school requires self-limitation on the part 
of each pupil, and no form of training could be more 
directly in the line of moral habit and moral power. All 
forms of combination in school work help to enthrone 
reason ancl will above desire and caprice, — help to exalt 
the spiritual man above the natural man. The exact 
combination of a gymnastic exercise requires a high 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 213 

tension of will to control the body; and this strengthens 
tlie power of the soul to rule its naturalness. The ethical 
culture of gymnastic drill is of niore value than its 
physical training. 

Thus the nature of the school Organization forces the 
pnpil to self-limitation. But the pnpil is not morally free 
until he needs no such specific external means to self- 
control. The school controls conduct in specific and 
niinute ways; but through this control the pupil is gradu- 
ally to grow stronger, so that he will, by and by, need 
less direct and immediate help from the Organization, 
until at last he becomes Avise enough to set up his own law 
of conduct, and strong enough to render obedience without 
the help of master and machinery. As a result of school 
discipline, the pupil should be enabled, in the light of 
reason, to set up his own Standard of action, and by habit 
and strength of will to bring himself under the law 
thus set up. It will be here recalled by the reader that 
the plan of management discussed in tlie preceding pages, 
witli the view of securing the unity essential to Instruc- 
tion, is cxactly in line with that of securing the ethical 
freedom of conduct here noted. At all stages of his course 
the student is to explain the reason for a given course of 
action, and then to make his decision in favor of the line 
indicated. The pupil must thus be released gradually 
from obedience to mere authority. The teacher must 
take pains to put the pupil under his own guidance. The 
teacher controls too much, leaving too little for the pupil. 
For the child sitting by the stove to move, without permis- 



214 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

sion, because too warm, is better than to move with per- 
mission. Under such circumstances pupils are sometimes 
ordered back to remain until tbey get permission from 
beacl quarters. The pupil then raises the band; the teacber 
nods cousent ; theu matters are in good condition because 
the pupil has rendered obedience to authority. But such 
obedieuce confers no power of seif -directum; whereas 
such power woulcl be cultivated if the pupil debate the 
question and decide for bim seif. This idea of obedience 
to a teacber is füll of mischief. The pupil should obey 
the law inherent in the case, which he himself is able to 
expound and set up as his only master. In an important 
sense, the pupil should do as he pleases. The teacher 
must let bim alone, and watch his actions and tendencies. 
Suppose a pupil in the primary room should go to the 
water-pail three times during a recitation, woulcl it not be 
well to let him go without interruption ; and then during 
the day, at some convenient time, — unless too much going, 
make an immediate demand, — to have a general discus- 
sion as to how long a pupil can do without water before 
suffering; and whether, if a pupil's wants have all been 
supplied before the beginning of a recitation, he could 
suffer before the close? And then permit pupils to point 
out the interruption occasioned if all should thus fre- 
quently visit the water-pail. Personal mention of the 
offender need not be made, but he should be drawn into 
the discussion. Or, if thought best, he alone might 
discuss the matter with the teacher. No matter about 
details; I mean only to insist that the student be led to 



THE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 215 

set up his own Standard of action and make his own 
decision in regard to it, so far as possible, without any 
regard for the mere authority of tlie teacher. 

This reminds one tliat there are two kinds of discipli- 
narians, — one who, by the force of anthority, maintains 
the appearance of good order ; the other causes good Order 
to arise within the pupil. What often passes for good 
order is qnite the opposite; and the so-called good dis- 
ciplinarian secures only the temporary form of discipline. 
This is the heavy-handed drill master who, by force, may 
quell a mob, bnt who can never prevent the occurrence of 
one. And, too, the appearance of order is good only while 
pupils are in the immediate presence of the master. Ko 
teacher is worlhy the name of disciplinarian who does not 
strengthen the pupil to govern himself after he turns the 
corner of the school-house. An able-bodied man may 
crush a school into fearful silence, which is the worst of 
disorder; but the teacher — and such may be a timid lady 
— who can cause order to originate in the understanding 
and consent of the pupil, whether secaring the same 
beautiful and formal external appearance or not, is the 
farae disciplinarian. A majority of teachers, from the 
common school to the College president, who have been 
noted for disciplinary power, have gained their notoriety 
on the score of external crushing power over the student. 
And by this I do not mean the application of physical 
force; there are a thousand and one ways of intimidating 
and bribing a student into the semblance of good conduct. 
The pupil may b<> enticed witli rewards, roll of honor, 



216 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

good will of teacher, and divers kinds of f avors ; or threat- 
ened with loss of privileges, with demerits, witli lowering 
of grades ; with whatever rack and torture desperate inge- 
nuity can devise. I know what proud success teacliers 
report to have achieved by this, that, and the other dis- 
ciplinary device of fear or favor; but, beneath the surface, 
it snrely can be but a questionable success. It may be 
that a teacher must hold the fort temporarily by such 
external forces; but he should be . ashamed to report 
success tili the pupils see the reason of proper conduct as 
grounded in the school itself, and voluntarily make the 
law of the school the law of their behavior. 

The true disciplinary power of school management is 
well illustrated in the method of punishment, already dis- 
cussed. Suppose the young lady who communicates in 
school be kept in to make up lost time ; or that the time 
be doubled, and still multiplied until it becoraes so un- 
pleasant that she finally desists. It has been shown that 
unity in such a case is not secured; for the unity desired 
is in the will of the student. While apparently at one 
with the school, she is not really so ; for to be so she must 
purpose with the school. But more important still, such 
a method of procedure -fails to cultivate the power of 
rational'self-control. If she had been required, as insisted 
on in precedmg pages, to explain the law inherent in the 
school against such conduct, and then to take charge of 
herseif in the light of the law, the temporary end of 
management would not only have been more effectively 
secured, but there would have been a gain in general 



TUE ORGANISM EXECUTING THE LAW. 217 

power to rule the spirit in the light of reason. Every 
time the pupil is led to resolve that he will take charge 
of himself, the teacher has accomplished a victory for 
righteousuess. This is a daily and almost hourly oppor- 
tunity. The whole spirit of management, and promi- 
nently that of punishment, requires constantly just such 
a resolution. Thus the true meaus of securing unity as 
a condition to instruction is the true means of ethical 
discipline. 

And thus in every phase of school management, the 
pupil is led to adopt reason and law as the guide to 
conduct; and through this is disciplined to the power of 
choosing the highest good, the true seif, as against the 
claims of the lower nature. Such supremacy of the higher 
over the lower seif comes from the intelligent and free 
adoption by the pupil of the school as his own rational 
nature objectified. The school's inherent laws of polite- 
ness, order, truthfulness, industry, justice, and love, are 
his own requirements of the school; and these return into 
his own life through his obedience to them in a form which 
he himself, without at first discerning it, projects. In the 
development of the fundamental law of management it 
was argued that the school is well managed and firmly 
grounded only through the pupil's conscious adoption of 
it as his school, — as the projection of his own rational 
needs. This fact now appears as the fundamental har- 
mony of the whole process, in that the same adoption is 
the essential feature in the process of ethical training. 
As at the outset, we saw the school evolving out of the 



218 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

requirements of the pupil's own nature, so now we see 
it dissolving as ethical elements into the life whence it 
came. Hence, scliool managenient secures, aside from 
Instruction, the self-realization of the pupil through his 
unity with the rational nature of the school; and from 
this, through unity with the law and reason of the world 
into which the school leads; which reason, law, and order 
will, too, gradually appear as his true other seif; so that 
he can but know that to realize his destiny he must 
conform to the divine spirit and order of the world, as 
manifested in nature ancl life everywhere about him. 

Thus every Institution becomes a constant appeal to his 
true nature ; the kingdom of heaven is seen to be the 
realization of the divine life of the individual. And thus, 
too, by extension, the world becomes a reflection of the 
individual ; the heavens which declare the glory of God, 
cleelare also his glory ; everything becomes a pillar of 
cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night to lead the 
individual out of the Egyptian bondage of his lower nature 
into the realm of spiritual life and freedom. 

" Over our manhood bend the skies ; 

Against our fallen and traitor lives 
The great winds utter prophecies ; 

With our faint heart the mountain strives; 
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 

Waits with its benedicite ; 
And to our age's drowsy blood 

Still shouts the inspiring sea." 



INDEX. 



A Graded Course of Study, Illustra- 
tion of, 1 20-124. 
Absence, law against, 70. 
Absent, 150. 

Abuses <if graded System, 114. 
Administration, scliool, 22. 
Advice, 180 

Alters, every lesson, 58. 
Altruism, 209. 
Antagonistic, 7, 68. 
Application of the law, 1G2. 
Artificial Stimulus, 185. 
Assimilates, the pupil, 46. 
Authority, 168. 

P.KIIAVIOR, 17. 

Bishop, 51. 
Blackboard, 81. 

Bunker Hill, battle of, 139. 
Books, supply of, 8. 
Boss, 176. 

Branchea to be taught, 60. 
Bürden of correction, 164. 

('AN ADA, 27. 

Carpeting, 72. 

Change of work, 138. 

Cliurcli, as teacher, 40. 

Class, the size of, 71, 109. 

Classes, pupils taught in, 114 ; num- 

ber for teacher, 127. 
Class-book, 155. 
Classification, 109, 115 ; difficulties of, 

118. 
Cleveland, schools of, 88. 



Combination, influence of social, 196. 
Commissioner of Educalion, 16, 18. 
Comtnunicable relations, 73. 
Compulsory law, 68. 
Condition of pupils, 134, 141. 
Coiiscious and unconscious tuition, 45. 
Consciousness, professional, 66 ; growth 

of, 68. 
Consultation, 25. 
Contact, personal, 69. 
Corporal punisbnient, 171. 
Correct, 163. 

Correction, purpose of, 159. 
Correlation, 63. 
Course of study, 62; underlying prin- 

ciples of, 63; illustrated. 120-124. 
Court Ilouses, 73. 
Crime, 27. 

Davidson-, Thomas, quotation from, 

195. 
Denoting, necessity for, 119. 
Desks, the rows, 74 ; cleared, 143 : 

pupil cut, 180. 
Development, the teacher needed, 67. 
Differentiated, the teacher, 38. 
Disciplinarians, 215. 
Disorder, niost cases of, 165. 
Directions, 143. 
Director, 88, 99. 
Directors, 7. 

Economt of energy, 75. 

Education, history of justifiable, 11; 

consists in, 39. 



220 



INDEX. 



Educational public, 89; sentiment, 102. 
Elements of professional spirit, 66. 
Emulation, 194. 

Energy, economy of, 75 ; wasted, 184. 
Environment, not break with, 12; the 

child's touch with, 38; pupil edu- 

cated through, 184. 
Ethical training, 183. 
Examinations, 189; a quotation on, 

190. 
Exclusion from school, 171. 
Executing the law, the organism, 103. 
Explanations, 150. 
External authority, 168. 

Family as teacher, 40. 

Fitch, quotation from, 190. 

Forgetting, danger of, 29. 

Formal school arises, 36. 

Freedom, in vocation, 41 ; rational, 

212. 
Fundamental law, 1. 

Good, the ultimate, 53. 

Gradation, 114; first step in, 116; of 

pupils, 117; difficulties of, 118. 
Grading countiy schools, 115. 
Grasp, complex functions, 65; the 

school, 107. 
Guessing, 155. 

Harmony, 65; of means and end, 

185 ; of the whole process, 217. 
Hawthorne, 46. 
History, 8. 

Honor, false sense of, 176. 
Hyde, Dr., quotation from, 9. 

Idea, everything exists in, 4 ; origi- 
nales school, 5 ; loyal to, 8. 

Ideal, the pupil's, 44, 48, 49 ; teacher, 
92. 

Ideals, 49. 

Identity, point of, 19. 

Illustration of a graded course of 
study, 120. 

Incendiary, 178. 

Incentives, 186. 



Industry, 205. 

Influence, susceptible to, 46. 

Inherent difficulties, 118. 

Institutions arise, 31. 

Instruction, supervision of, £6; con- 
dition of, 97 ; the organism in the 
process of, 104; two kinds of, 184. 

Instruments of school work, 81. 

Intermediate grades, 170. 

Janitoe, 98. 
Jerusalem, xii. 
Justice, 207. 

Ejeramos, Longfellow's, 48. 
Kindergarten teacher, 55. 

Laboeatoey, 81. 

Law of unity, 1 ; of the school, 1 ; 
fundamental, 7 ; broadest aspect of, 
requires, 14 ; application of to pun- 
ishment, 175 ; evolving the organ- 
ism, 35 

Lectures, 150. 

Library, 82. 

Life-meaning, conscious of, 59. 

Lighting, 77. 

Lincoln, allusion to, 28, 38. 

Longfellow, Keramos, 48. 

Machineey, necessity for, 29. 

Man takes active part in own devel- 

opment, 35. 
Manage, xi. 
Management, worst stroke of, 23 ; of 

a school, 25; difficulties of, 176. 
Mclntyre, quotation from, 38. 
Motives to study, 188, 194. 
Movement, obstacles in forward, 152. 
Movements, unnecessary, 79. 

Natuee as teacher, 40. 
Neecllework, 64. 
Noise, 79. 

Objects, removed from desk, 78. 
Obstacles in forward movement, 152. 
Offence, 159, 161. 



INDEX. 



221 



Order, 202. 

Organie thought, 64; unity in, 110. 

Organization of tlie school, 108. 

Organism, law of, 1; the law evolving 
the, 35 ; executing the law, 103 ; in 
process of Instruction, 104. 

Palissy, 48. 

Patriotism. 208. 

Pet cents, 18(5. 

Personal contact, 09. 

Philosophy of Teaching, 33, 210. 

Picture from life, 144. 

Plato, allusion to, 26. 

Politeness, 198. 

'Possam Kingdom School, 113. 

Practice. viii. 

Preparation of Iesson, 136. 

Prepossessing moods, 80. 

Problem, 132. 

Problems, one of the serious, 10 ; inter- 
esting and difticult, 30. 

Process, school management, vii ; 
schind an organie, 1. 

Professional spirit, 48; two phases, 
52; not in conllict, 54; more than 
a suseeptibility, 57; consciousness 
of subjeet-matter, 60; sensitiveness 
to unity of organism, 64. 

Program, the, 130. 

Proinoting, necessity fbr, 129. 

Pneblo plan, 112. 

Punishinent, law of, 158. 

Pupil, to report, 177. 

Pupil'8 ideal, 44. 

Qüalitees in teacher, anifyinp, 38; se- 
cured,84; distinetions not patent,100. 
Questions, 14ü. 
Questioning classes, 148. 

Rational freedom, 212. 
Becitation, memoriter, 154. 
Reforms in Colleges, 56. 
Beinstate himself, 164, 
Reinstated, 166. 

Relation of teacher and pupil, com- 
municable, 73. 



Repetition, 153. 
Report, pupil to, 177. 
Requirement, the broadest, 13; of pro- 
fessional spirit, 54; the last, 62. 
Restoration of broken unity, 157. 
Restore the unity, 162. 
Retribution, 158. 

Salary, insufficient, 41; increase of, 
42: not personal inducement, 42, 5L 

School, organie process, law of, 1 ; 
Spiritual unity, 3; elements of, 5; 
outline of process, 6; the real school, 
13 ; created by students, 22: ulti- 
mate law of, 31; supervision, 85. 

School punishment, 102. 

School-room, 72. 

Seating, law of, 74. 

Seats, 76. 

Seif, the, 59. 

Serpent, shows wisdom, 10. 

Silence, the law of, 202. 

Social combination, inrluence of, 196. 

Society, 196. 

Socrates, 60, 146. 

Spencer, Herbert, quotation from. 3. 

Spiritual unity, 15; of the pupil him- 
self, 21. 

State, x; proclaims laws, 2; policy, 24. 

Statute, 7. 

Stevens, Professor, 190. 

Stone Face, the Great, 46. 

Student, creates school, 21. 

Subject, a mental process, 62. 

Subjeet-matter, 61. 

Superintendent, 18, 87; test of, 91; 
selected, 97. 

Supervising conditions of instruetiou, 
97. 

Supervision, 85; limitations of, 99. 

Sympathy, 108. 

System, fixed, 8; centre of, 18; of 
city sehools, 126. 

Tact, ix. 

reacher, conscious of, 20; distinetion 
between, and other agencies, 39; 

ideal of pupil, 45; nothing but, 57; 



222 



INDEX. 



every lesson the, 58 ; selecting the, 

90 ; aiding the, 92. 
Teaching, 70. 
Temperature, 77. 
Tension, 10 ; between real and ideal, 

12 ; with subject, 187. 
Tested, a school Organization is, 13. 
Testing school management, 181. 
Truancy, 70. 
Truant, 163. 
Theory, viii. 
Trnstees, township, 27. 
Truthfulness, 203. 
Truth-loving, 45. 
Tuition, conscious and unconscious, 

40. 

Ultimate end, conscious of, 58. 
Uniformity, 117; of texts, 118. 
University, a State, 14; Student, 167. 
Unifying qualities in teacher, 38; con- 

ditions of teacher and pupil, 67. 
Unity, law of , co-operative, 16 ; must 

not be violated, 30 ; in school as a 



•whole, 105; in class studying, 133; 
in class reciting. 141; mainly se^ 
cured, 156 ; restoration of broken, 
157. 
Utopia, an educational, 12. 

Value, ethical, to the student, 25. 

Ventilation, 77. 

Violated, law quite commonly, 27. 

Vividly conscious, 59. 

Vocation, freedom in, 41; choice of, 

43. 
Vote, why teach, 40. 

Warning the teacher, 106. 

Waves circle out, 58. 

Weight, exact, 155. 

Whispers, 158, 160. 

Whispering, 159. 

Whole, unity in school as a, 105. 

Will, offence in, 159. 

Work, 207. 

Worry, 179. 

Wrong act, 159. 



MATHEMATICS. 



WENTWORTH'S SERIES. 

fPWO words indicate the two leading characteristics of these 
reinarkable books: scholarship and text-book availability. 
They combine mathematical brilliancy with all the elements of 
school-room popularity. The author's aim was to be lielpful. He 
has niade a study of his subjectswith the psychology and probable 
capacity of the students constantly in niind. Ilis books enable 
the average Student not nierely to " learn something," but to 
MASTEB the study, and at the same tinie they give the brighter 
ones plenty to exercise their faculties. There is 110 atteinpt to 
niake a parade of learning. On the other hand, there is 110 abso- 
lution froni solid work. Everything is niade simple, practical, 
direct, and thorough. Mental energy is econoniized. The teacher 
has to use his strength only in the necessary work of teaching, 
and the pupil his only in the necessary work of acquiring. 

To learn hy doing, and to learn one step thoroughly before the next 
is attempted, are the chief elements of the method, and yet no 
books give pupil or teacher less of the tread-mill feeling. The 
consciousness of mastery constantly cheers and invigorates the 
student, while the teacher has the satisfaction of wielding an 
instrument fitted to the hand. All will recognize in these char- 
acteristics the marks of ideal text-books. The testimony of use 
may be sunmied up in one word, Satisfaction. 

The following figures speak volumes for the success of the 
Wentworth books : 

In January, 1894, according to the most accurate Information obtainable, 
Wentworth's Series, in whole or in part, was in use by over 220,000 pupils 
in the secondary schools alone of the United States. In the three repre- 
Bentative States, Massachusetts, New York, and Illinois, 41,30ü pupils were 
using Wentworth, while only 9,191 were using the next most populär book. 
For New York State, there are official figures — those of the Regents of the 
University. These sliow tliat for 1892-93, "f the schools andei the eontrol 
of the Regents, the number using Wentworth was: Algebra, 17.S; Plane 
Geometry, 280 ; Solid Geometry, 112 ; and the numbers using the next most 
populär book were respeetively 05, 21, and !). 



MATHEMATICS. 



79 



Introductory Books. 



Wentworth's Primary Arithmetic. Wentworth's Elementary Arithmetic. 

Introduction price, each 30 cents. 

Wentworth's Grammar School Arithmetic. 

Introduction price, 65 cents. 

This, with either the Primary or the Elementary Arithmetic, forms a 
complete course for Common Schools, and is believed to present the best 
known methods in the most attractive, available, and practical form. 

Wentworth and Reed's First Steps in Number. 

For prices, see List at the heginning of this Catalogue ; for füll descrip- 
tion, see Common School Catalogue. 



A High School Arithmetic. 



(Wentworth and Hill's Practical Arithmetic.) 

By G. A. Wentworth, recently Prof. of Mathematics, Phillips Exeter 
Academy, and the late Dr. Thomas Hill, Portland, Me. 12mo. Roan 
back. 367 pages. Mailing price, $1.10; for introduction, $1.00. An- 
swers free, on teachers' order. 

Same. Abridged Edition. For Grammar Schools. 288 pages (inclucl- 
ing Answers). Mailing price, $1.00; for introduction, 75 cents. 

npHIS book is intended for high and normal schools and acade- 

rnies. The problems cover a wide ränge of subjects, and are 

particularly adapted to general mental discipline, to preparation 

for higher studies, mechanical work, business, or professional life. 



J. M. Peirce, Professor of Mathe- 
matics, Harvard College : The High 
School Arithmetic is clear, straight- 



forward, sound, careful, and abun- 
dantly supplied with well-chosen 
examples. 



Wentworth's First Steps in Algebra. 

By G. A. Wentworth, recently Professor of Mathematics in Phillips 
Exeter Academy. 12mo. Half leather. vii + 184 pages. Mailing price, 
70 cents ; for introduction, 60 cents. 

HHHIS book is specially prepared for pupils in high schools and 

the npper grades of grammar schools. 



Edwin N. Brown, Superintendent 
of Schools, Hastings, Neb. : It is 
well adapted to the purpose for 
which it was designed. 

John T. White, Principal Alle- 
gheny County High School, Cumber- 



land, Md. : It is a mathematical 
gem. I have been so well pleased 
with the works of Professor Went- 
worth that I scarcely see how they 
could be excelled. 



80 



MATHEMATICS. 



Wentworth's School Algebra. 

By <;. A. Wbntwobth, recently Professoi of Mathematics, Phillips 
Exeter Academy. Half morocco. v+362pages. Mailing price, $1.26: 
for introduction, $1.12. Answersin pamphlet form, free, on teachers' 
Orders. 

rpilK School Algebra is offered as exactly right for the usual 

high school and academic courses. It gives a thorough and 

practica! treatment of the principles of Algebra up to and includ- 

ing the binonnal theorem, and is strictly in line thronghout with 

the author's College Algebra. For College preparation it is 

particularly well suited. The problems in thia book are nearly all 

ni'w, either original or selected from recent examination papers, 

and are eraded with the utmost care. 



Theodore L. Sewall, Principal of 
Girls' Classical School, Indianapolis : 
An admirable book, like all of the 
Wentwortb Series. 

George Gilbert, Principal of ehes- 
ter Academy, Po.: The best book 
for its grade yet issued. 

George E. Gay, Principal of High 
School, Malden,Mass.: Better adapted 
to usc in high schools than any other. 

T. W. Palmer, Prof. of Mathe- 
matics, Unitersity of Alabama: An 
admirable work. 

C. D. Schmitt, University of Ten- 
nessee: For the work intended, Ido 
not ihiuk ü can be snrpassed. 

L. K. Hunt, Principal <f High 
School, Corning, X.Y.: It meets my 
desires completely. 

W. P. Durfee, Prof. of Mathe- 
matics, Hobart College, X.Y.- An 
admirable book for College prepara- 
tion. 

J. S. Slocum, Principal South 
Division High School, Chicago: I 
have used it in connection witli the 
preparation of a class for College 
and have been pleased with its clear 
definitions, logical arrangement, and 
happy selection of both examples 
and problems. 



George W. Price, Teacher of 

MathematiCS, High School, Council 
Bluffs, Ja. : Without doubt the best 
book out for high schools. 

Erastus Test, Principal Purdue 
University Prep. Dept. : I regard it, 
as tlie nc plus ultra in the line of a 
school Algebra. 

Frank E. Thompson, Principal 
High School, Newport, II. L: A 
thorough knowledge of the Contents 
of the book will enable a pupil to 
pass an entrance examination to 
any College. 

David Eugene Smith, Teacher of 
Mathematics, State ITormal and 

Training School, Yjisilunti Mich.: 
I have examined it with a good deal 
of care. It seems well adapted tothe 
needs of our sehools — even better 
adapted than the author's former 
work, which I have used and recom- 
mended. The improvements to be 
found in this work are sueh as will 
meei the approval of all teachers. 

0. S. Westcott, Principal North 
Division High School, Chicago: The 
Student who finishes it will be splen- 
didly prepared to grapple with the 
beautiful discussions of liigher Al- 
ge bra. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 286 639 8 




